Not I But The Wind(1935)

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“ Not I, But the Wind . . . ”

“Mot I, But The Wind . .

By <©•

FRIEDA LAWRENCE

geb. Freiin von Richthofen

<5>

O

WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD
London 8f Toronto

FIRST PUBLISHED 1 935

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
AT THE WINDMILL PRESS, KINGSWOOD, SURREY

Foreword

It was still cold last night, though it is the middle of May.

Here the ranch, with the Sangre de Cristo mountain range
behind it to the northeast, slopes to the desert. The big pine
trees stand like dark sentinels in the night at the edge of the
twenty-acre alfalfa field. Beyond them floats the desert. You
can see far. A few lights twinkle at Ranchos de Taos. A
shepherd’s fire glows. All is covered by an enormous sky full of
stars, stars that hang in the pine trees, in Lawrence’s big tree
with his phoenix on it that the Brett painted, stars that lean on
the edge of the mountains, stars twinkling out of the Milky
Way. It is so still. Only stars, nothing but stars.

This morning early there was still ice on the edge of the
irrigation ditch from the Gallina Canyon. There is such a rush
of water. The ice is melting high up in the mountains and the
water sings through one’s blood.

But now, about midday, it is warm. The desert below
circles in rings of shadow and sunshine. The alfalfa field is
green, during these last days of sunshine it has turned green.

I am in the little cabin that Lawrence built with the Indians.
I sit in the chair that he made with the “petit point” canvas
that we bought in the Rue de la Paix in Paris and that I
embroidered. It took me a long time, and when I got bored,
he did a bit.

It is a nice chair, although a bit rough, carved as it was with
only a penknife.

So here I sit and try to write.

I didjnot want to write this book. I wanted to give Lawrence

[v]

. Foreword .

my silence. Would he have wanted me to write it? Would he
have jeered at me as one of those intellectual females whom he
disliked so much? Is it any use, my writing?

Do I want to blow my own trumpet? Yes, I do. But will it
have a clear rousing sound or will it be a bit wheezy and out
of tunc? Can I hear the real song of our life, the motifs gay,
bold, sad, terrible, or can’t I?

After all, this is my book, that I am writing. Do I under¬
stand anything at all or am I only recording unliving dull facts?

Is it a genuine necessity for me to write or has Lawrence said
all a million times better than I could? Will this, that costs me
so much, be of any use, any pleasure to anybody else? Will
others who come after learn from our life, take from it the good
and avoid our mistakes? ... I wonder. . . .

Anyhow, I will try to write as honestly as I can. Lies are all
very well in their place but the truth seems to me so much more
interesting and proud, but truth is not so easily conquered,
there is always more of it, like a bottomless pit is truth. It was a
long fight for Lawrence and me to get at some truth between
us; it was a hard life with him, but a wonderful one. Stark and
bare, without trimmings and frills. But a few realities re¬
mained, a lasting truth triumphed.

Whatever happened on the surface of everyday life, there
blossomed the certainty of the unalterable bond between us,
and of the ever-present wonder of all the world around us.

We had so many battles to fight out, so much to get rid of, so
much to surpass. We were both good fighters.

There was the ordinary man-and-woman fight between us,
to keep the balance, not to trespass, not to topple over. The
balance in a human relationship was one of Lawrence’s chief
themes. He felt that each should keep intact his own integrity
and isolation, yet at the same time preserve a mutual bond

[vi]

. Foreword . . .

like the north and south poles which between them enclose the
world.

Then there was the class war. We came from different
worlds. We both had to reach beyond our class, to be reborn
into the essence of our individual beings, the essence that is so
much deeper than any class distinction.

Then beyond class there was the difference in race, to cross
over to each other. He, the Englishman, Puritan, stern and
uncompromising, so highly conscious and responsible; I, the
German, with my vagueness and uncertainty, drifting along.

Only the fierce common desire to create a new kind of life,
this was all that could make us truly meet.

As for pretending to understand Lawrence or to explain him,
I am neither so impertinent nor such a fool. We are so much
more than we understand. Understanding is such a little part
of us, there is so much in us of unexplored territory that
understanding can never grasp. As Lawrence and I were
adventurers by nature, we explored.

I only know that*! felt the wonder of him always. Sometimes
it overwhelmed me, it knocked out all my consciousness as if a
flame had burnt me up. I remained in awe and wonder.

Sometimes I hated him and held him off as if he were the
devil himself. At other times I took him as you take the
weather. Here’s a spring day, glorious sunshine, what a joy!
Then another day — alas! all is changed: it is chilly and it rains
and I wish, how I wish, it were sunny again.

I learned that a genius contains the whole gamut of human
emotions, from highest to lowest. I learned that a man must
be himself, bad or good at any price.

Life and emotions change in us. We are not pictures,
“Patiences on monuments”; anyhow Lawrence wasn’t, nor
I either. Ours was not just a love affair, just as his writing

[vii]

. . Foreword .

was not just writing as a profession.

His love wiped out all my shames and inhibitions, the
failures and the miseries of my past. He made me new and
fresh, that I might live freely and lightly as a bird. He fought
for the liberty of my being, and won. Just as in his writings
he tried, with his fierce and responsible love for his fellowmen,
to free them of the stale old past, and take the load of all the
centuries of dead thought and feeling on himself.

Will the world gain from him as I did? I hope so, in the
long run.

[viii]

Contents

Foreword
We Meet

Going Away Together
Isartal

Walking to Italy

I9I3_I9I4

The War

Lawrence and My Mother
After the War
America

Going Back to Europe
Nearing the End
Conclusion

Illustrations

FACING PAGE

Frieda Lawrence ^

Frieda von Richthofen ao

Lawrence and His Family

Frieda in Bavarian Costume 42

Frieda’s Mother 33

Lawrence and Frieda in Mexico 142

Lawrence in Mexico 1.2

Lawrence in Mexico

Frieda Lawrence on Azul ^3

The Lawrences’ Ranch on the Lobo 164

Villa Bernada, Spotorno 1-j0

Lawrence at Villa Bernada in Spotorno 182

Frieda, Lawrence, and Huxley at the Mirenda 182

Lawrence and Aldous Huxley 226

[xi]

“Not I, But the Wind . .

We Meet

As I look back now it surprises me that Lawrence could have
loved me at first sight as he did. I hardly think I could have
been a very lovable woman at the time. I was thirty-one and
had three children. My marriage seemed a success. I had all a
woman can reasonably ask. Yet there I was, all “smock-
ravelled, ’’ to use one of Lawrence’s phrases.

I had just met a remarkable disciple of Freud and was full
of undigested theories. This friend did a lot for me. I was
living like a somnambulist in a conventional set life and he
awakened the consciousness of my own proper self.

Being born and reborn is no joke, and being born into your
own intrinsic self, that separates and singles you out from all the
rest — it’s a painful process.

When people talk about sex, I don’t know what they mean —
as if sex hopped about by itself like a frog, as if it had no
relation to the rest of living, one’s growth, one’s ripening.
What people mean by sex will always remain incomprehensible
to me, but I am thankful to say sex is a mystery to me.

Theories applied to life aren’t any use. Fanatically I believed
that if only sex were “free” the world would straightaway
turn into a paradise. I suffered and struggled at outs with
society, and felt absolutely isolated. The process left me
unbalanced. I felt alone. What could I do, when there were so
many millions who thought differently from me? But I
couldn’t give in, I couldn’t submit. It wasn’t that I felt
hostile, only different. I could not accept society. And then
Lawrence came. It was an April day in 1912. He came for

[3]

. . “ 'Not /, But the Wind . . .” . .

lunch, to see my husband about a lectureship at a German
University. Lawrence was also at a critical period of his life just
then. The death of his mother had shaken the foundations of his
health for a second time. He had given up his post as a school¬
master at Croydon. He had done with his past life.

I see him before me as he entered the house. A long thin
figure, quick straight legs, light, sure movements. He seemed
so obviously simple. Yet he arrested my attention. There was
something more than met the eye. What kind of a bird was
this?

The half-hour before lunch the two of us talked in my room,
French windows open, curtains fluttering in the spring wind,
my children playing on the lawn.

He said he had finished with his attempts at knowing
women. I was amazed at the way he fiercely denounced them.

I had never before heard anything like it. I laughed, yet I could
tell he had tried very hard, and had cared. We talked about
CEdipus and understanding leaped through our words.

After leaving, that night, he walked all the way to his home.
It was a walk of at least five hours. Soon afterwards he wrote to
me: “You are the most wonderful woman in all England.”

I wrote back: “You don’t know many women in England,
how do you know?” He told me, the second time we met:
“You are quite unaware of your husband, you take no notice of
him.” I disliked the directness of this criticism.

He came on Easter Sunday. It was a bright, sunny day.
The children were in the garden hunting for Easter eggs.

The maids were out, and I wanted to make some tea. I tried ,
to turn on the gas but didn’t know how. Lawrence became
cross at such ignorance. Such a direct critic! It was something
my High and Mightiness was very little accustomed to.

Yet Lawrence really understood me. From the first he saw

[4]

FRIEDA LAWRENCE

. . We Meet .

through me like gl&ss, saw how hard I was trying to keep
up a cheerful front. I thought it was so despicable and unproud
and unclean to be miserable, but he saw through my hard
bright shell.

What I cannot understand is how he could have loved
me and wanted me at that time. I certainly did have what he
called “sex in the head”; a theory of loving men. My real self
was frightened and shrank from contact like a wild thing.

So our relationship developed.

One day we met at a station in Derbyshire. My two small
girls were with us. We went for a long walk through the early-
spring woods and fields. The children were running here and
there as young creatures will.

We came to a small brook, a little stone bridge crossed it.
Lawrence made the children some paper boats and put
matches in them and let them float downstream under the
bridge. Then he put daisies in the brook, and they floated
down with their upturned faces. Crouched by the brook,
playing there with the children, Lawrence forgot about me
completely.

Suddenly I knew I loved him. He had touched a new
tenderness in me. After that, things happened quickly.

He came to see me one Sunday. My husband was away and
I said: “Stay the night with me.” “No, I will not stay in your
husband’s house while he is away, but you must tell him the
truth and we will go away together, because I love you.”

I was frightened. I knew how terrible such a thing would be
for my husband, he had always trusted me. But a force
stronger than myself made me deal him the blow. I left
the next day. I left my son with his father, my two* little
girls I took to their grandparents in London. I said good¬
bye to them on Hampstead Heath, blind and blank with

[5]

>5

. “ Not I, But the Wind

pain, dimly feeling I should never again live with them as I had
done.

Lawrence met me at Charing Cross Station, to go away with
him, never to leave him again.

He seemed to have lifted me body and soul out of all my
past life. This young man of twenty-six had taken all my fate,
all my destiny, into his hands. And we had known each other
barely for six weeks. There had been nothing else for me to do
but submit.

Going Away Together

We met at Charing Cross and crossed the grey Channel sitting
on some ropes, full of hope and agony. There was nothing but
the grey sea, and the dark sky, and the throbbing of the ship,
and ourselves.

We arrived at Metz where my father was having his fifty-
years-of-service jubilee. Pre-war Germany: the house was full of
grandchildren and relatives, and I stayed in a hotel where
Lawrence also stayed. It was a hectic time. Bands were playing
in honour of my father, telegrams came flying from England.
Lawrence was pulling me on one side, my children on the other.
My mother wanted me to stay with her. My father, who loved
me, said to me in great distress: “My child, what are you
doing? I always thought you had so much sense. I know the
world.” I answered: “Yes, that may be, but you never knew
the best.” I meant to know the best.

There was a fair going on at Metz at the moment. I was
walking with my sister Johanna through the booths of Turkish
Delight, the serpentmen, the ladies in tights, all the pots and
pans.

Johanna, or “Nusch,” as we called her, was at the height of
her beauty and elegance, and was the last word in “chic.”
Suddenly Lawrence appeared round a corner, looking odd, in a
cap and raincoat. What will she think of him? I thought.

He spoke a few words to us and went away. To my surprise,
Johanna said: “You can go with him. You can trust him-.”

At first nobody knew of Lawrence’s presence except my
sisters. One afternoon Lawrence and I were walking in the

[7J

. “Not / ; But the Wind . . .” .

fortifications of Metz when a sentinel touched Lawrence on the
shoulder, suspecting him of being an English officer. I had to
get my father’s help to pull us out of the difficulty. Lo, the cat
was out of the bag, and I took Lawrence home to tea.

He met my father only once, at our house. They looked at
each other fiercely — my father, the pure aristocrat, Lawrence,
the miner’s son. My father, hostile, offered a cigarette to
Lawrence. That night I dreamt that they had a fight, and that
Lawrence defeated my father.

The strain of Metz proved too great for Lawrence and he left
for the Rhineland. I stayed behind in Metz.

Here are some of Lawrence’s letters, which show his side of
our story up to that time.

[8]

Going Away Together

Eastwood— T uesd ay

I feel so horrid and helpless . I know it all sickens you , and you
are almost at the end of the tether . And what was decent yesterday
will perhaps be frightfully indecent today . But it's like being ill:
there's nothing to do but shut one's teeth and look at the wall and
wait .

You say you're going to G . . . tomorrow. But even that is
uncertain . And I must know about the trains. What time are you
going to Germany , what day , what hour , which railway , which class?
Do tell me as soon as you can , or else what I can do? I will come any
time you tell me — but let me know.

You must be in an insane whirl in your mind. I feel helpless and
rudderless , a stupid scattered fool. For goodness' sake tell me something
and something definite . I would do anything on earth for you, and I can
do nothing. Yesterday I knew would be decent , but I don't like my
feeling today— presentiment. I am afraid of something low , like an eel
which bites out of the mud , and hangs on with its teeth . I feel as if I
can't breathe while we're in England. I wish I could come and seeyou}
or else you me.

D. H. Lawrence.

[9]

'Not /, But the Wind ,

Queens Square,

Eastwood, Notts
2 May 1912

I shall get in King's Cross tomorrow at 1.25. Will that do? You see
I couldn't come today because I was waiting for the laundry and for
some stuff from the tailor's . 1 had prepared for Friday , but Thursday
was impossible. I am sorry if it makes things tiresome .

Will you meet me, or let somebody meet me, at King's Cross? Or else
wire me very early, what to do. It is harassing to be as we are.

I have worried endlessly over you. Is that an insult? But I shan't
get an easy breath till I see you. This time tomorrow , exactly , I shall be
in London.

I hope you've got some money for yourself . I can muster only eleven
pounds. A chap owes me twenty fve quid, but is in such a fix himself, I
daren't bother him. At any rate, eleven pounds will take us to Metz ,
then I must rack my poor brains.

Oh Lord, I must say " making history," as Garnett puts it, isn't the
most comfortable thing on earth . If I know how things stood with you,
I wouldn't care a damn. As it is, I eat my blessed heart out.

Till tomorrow, till tomorrow, till tomorrow {I nearly put d demain).

D. H. Lawrence.

P.S. I haven't told anything to anybody. Lord, but I wonder how
you are.

[ 10]

D. H. L.

Going Away Together

Metz

Damn the rain! 1 suppose you won't go out while it continues
heavily . I'll venture forth in a minute — 9.15 already . I don't know
where you live exactly — 50 if I can't find you I shall put this in number 4.
That's the nearest I can get; is it right?

If I don't meet you, I suppose I shan't see you today, since this is
the festive day . 1 don't mind. At least, I do, but I understand it can't
be helped .

I shall go into the country if it'll keep a bit fine — shall be home here
about 2.30, 1 suppose. lean work as soon as I like.

Let us go away from Metz. Tell Else I'm not cross . How should
I be? You are the soul of good intention — how can one be cross with you?
But I wish I had the management of our affairs.

Don't love me for things I'm not — but also don't tell me I'm mean .
I wondered what had become of you this morning. Were you being wise
and good and saving my health? You needn't . I'm not keen on coming
to your place to lunch tomorrow — but I am in your hands — “ into
thine hand, 0 Lord, I commend," etc. I want you to do as you like, over
little things such as my coming to your father's house. In oddments, your
will is my will.

I love you — but I always have to bite my tongue before I can say it.
It's only my Englishness.

Commend me to your sister. I lodge an appeal with her. I shall say to
her — it's no good saying it to you — ^ Aye z pitie de moi."

No, I'm only teasing. It doesn't matter at all what happens —
or what doesn’t happen, that's more to the point — these few days.
But if you put up your fingers, and count your days in Germany, and
compare them with the days to follow in Nottingham , then you
will see, you — (/ don't mean it) — are selling sovereigns at a

[11]

. “Not I, But the Wind. . .

penny each. No, you are not doing it — but it's being done.

Don’t be hurt, or I shall — let me see — go into a monastery — this
hotel is precious much like one already.

This is the last day I let you off— so make the most of it and be
jolly.

[ 12]

Going Away Together

Tuesday —

Now I can't stand it any longer , I can't . For two hours I haven't
moved a muscle— just sat and thought . I have written a letter to
E. . . . You needn't , of course , send it. But you must say to him all I
have said. No more dishonour , no more lies. Let them do their — silliest
— but no more subterfuge , lying, dirt, fear. I feel as if it would strangle
me. What is it all but procrastination? No , I can't bear it, because it's
bad. I love you. Let us face anything , do anything , put up with
anything. But this crawling under the mud I cannot bear. w .

I'm afraid I've got a fit of heroics . I've tried so hard to work — but I
can't . This situation is round my chest like a cord . It mustn’t
continue. I will go right away , if you like. I will stop in Metz till you
get E . . .'s answer to the truth. But no, I won't utter or act or
willingly let you utter or act , another single lie in the business.

I'm not going to joke , I'm not going to laugh , I'm not going to make
light of things for you. The situation tortures me too much. It's the
situation, the situation I can't stand — no, and I won't. I love you too
much.

Don't show this letter to either of your sisters — no. Let us be good.
You are clean, but you dirty your feet. I'll sign myself as you call me —
Mr. Lawrence .

Don't be miserable — if I didn't love you I wouldn't mind when you
lied.

But I love you, and Lord, I pay for it.

14 Hot I, But the Wind .

Hotel Rheinischer Hof, Trier
8 May 1912

I am here — I have dined — it seems rather nice . The hotel is little —
the man is proprietor , waiter , bureau , and everything else , apparently —
speaks English and French and German quite sweetly — has evidently
been in swell restaurants abroad — has an instinct for doing things
decently , with just a touch of swank — is cheap — his wife ( they're a
youngish couple ) draws the beer — it's awfully nice . The bedroom
is two marks fifty per day , including breakfast— per person . That's
no more than my room at the Deutscher Hof and this is much nicer .
It's on the second floor — two beds — rather decent . How, you ought
to be here , you ought to be here. Remember , you are to be my wife —
see that they don't send you any letters, or only under cover to me.
But you aren't here yet. I shall love Trier — it isn't a ghastly medley
like Metz — new town, old town, barracks, barracks, cathedral,
Montigny. This is nice, old, with trees down the town. I wish you
were here. The valley all along coming is full of apple trees in blossom ,
pink puffs like the smoke of an explosion , and then bristling vine sticks,
so that the hills are angry hedgehogs.

I love you so much. Ho doubt there'll be another dish of tragedy
in the morning, and we've only enough money to run us a fortnight ,
and we don't knotb where the next will come from, but still I'm happy, I
am happy. But I wish you were here. But you'll come, and it isn't
Metz . Curse Metz .

They are all men in this hotel — business men. They are the con¬
noisseurs of comfort and moderate price . Be sure men will get the best
for the money. I think it'll be nice for you. You don't mind a masculine
atmosphere , I know.

' I begin to feel quite a man of the world. I ought, I suppose, with this

in]

. . . Going Away Together .

wickedness of waiting for another marts wife in my heart . Never
mind , in heaven there is no marriage nor giving in marriage •

I must hurry to post — its getting late . Come early on Saturday
morning . Ask the Black Hussy at Deutscher Hof if there are any
letters for me . I love you — and Else — I do more than thank her .
Love .

D. H. Lawrence.

[15]

'Not I, But the Wind . .

Hotel Rheinischer Hof
Trier — Thursday

Another day nearly gone — it is just sunset . Trier is a nice town .
This is a nice hotel . The man is a cocky little fellow, but good . He’s
lived in every country and swanks about his languages . He really speaks
English nicely. He’s about thirty-five , I should think. When I came in
just now — it is sunset — he said , “You are tired?” It goes without
saying I laughed. “ A little bit,” he added , quite gently. That amuses
me. He would do what my men friends always want to do, look after me a
bit in the trifling, physical matters.

I have written a newspaper article that nobody on earth will print,
because it’s too plain and straight. However , I don’t care. And I’ve
been a ripping walk — up a great steep hill nearly like a cliff, beyond the
river. I will take you on Saturday — so nice : apple blossom everywhere,
and the cuckoo, and brilliant beech trees. Beech leaves seem to rush out in
spring, with <£clat. You can have coffee at a nice place, and look at the
town , like a handful of cinders and rubbish thrown beside the river down
below. Then there are the birds always . And I went past a Madonna
stuck with flowers, beyond the hilltop, among all the folds and jumble of
hills: pretty as heaven. And I smoked a pensive cigarette, and philoso¬
phized about love and life and battle, and you and me. And I thought of a
theme for my next novel. And I forgot the German for matches, so I had
to beg a light from a young priest, in French, and he held me the red end
of his cigar. There are not so many soldiers here. I should never hate
Trier. There are more priests than soldiers. Of the sort I’ve seen — not
a bit Jesuitical — I prefer them. The cathedral is crazy: a grotto, not a
cathedral , inside — baroque, baroque . The town is always pleasant, and
the people .

One more day, and you’ll be here. Suddenly I see your chin. I love

[ 16 ]

. Going Away Together .

your chin . At this moment , I seem to love you, because you've got such a
nice chin. Doesn't it seem ridiculous?

I must go down to supper . I am tired. It was a long walk . And
then the strain of these days. I dreamed E . . . was frantically
furiously wild with me — I won't tell you the details — and then he
calmed down , and I had to comfort him. I am a devil at dreaming. It's
because I get up so late. One always dreams after seven a.m.

The day is gone. I'll talk a bit to my waiter fellow , and post this.
You will come on Saturday? By Jove , if you don't! We shall always
have to battle with life, so we'll never fight with each other , always help.

Bis Samstag — ich Hebe dich schwer.

D. H. Lawrence.

[17]

4 Not I, But the Wind .

Postcard with picture of Trier, Porta Nigra

Here is your Porta Nigra , that you have missed three times . I think I
am quite clever. It is a weird and circuitous journey to Waldbrol — seven
hours . Now I am at Niederlahnstein — Rechtrheinisch — having just
come over from Coblentz! I go on to Troisdorf—ever heard of such
places! — then to Hennef—and at last Waldbrol— four changes —
umsteigen — seven hours' journey. But isn't the Mosel valley pretty? The
Rhein is most awfully German. It makes me laugh. It looks fearfully fit
for the theatre. Address me care of Frau Karl Krenkow , Waldbrol
Rheinprovinz . Anything new and nasty happened? This is my
sentimental journey .

Love

D. H. Lawrence

Postcard with picture of Trier, Basilica

Now , I am in Hennef—my last changing place. It is 8.30 — and
still an hour to wait. So I am sitting like a sad swain beside a nice ,
twittering little river , waiting for the twilight to drop , and my last train
to come. I shan't get to Waldbrol till after 1 1 .00 — nine hours on the
way — and that is the quickest it can be done. But it's a nice place ,
Hennef nearly like England . It's getting dark . Now for the first time
during today , my detachment leaves me, and I know I only love you.
The rest is nothing at all. And the promise of life with you is all
richness. Now I know.

[18]

D. H. Lawrence

Going Away Together

Adr. Frau Karl Krenkow
Waldbrol — Rheinprovinz

It's really very nice here — Hannah is very bright and so decent
with me . Her husband is “a very good man " — uninteresting . She
never loved him — married him because she was thirty and time going
by . Already she's quite fond of me — but do not mind , she is perfectly
honourable — the last word of respectability. Then there is “ Opar -
O' pa” — how do you spell it? — Stiilchen. He is seventy-three — a lovely
old man — really a sweet disposition , and no fool. Now he is really
lovable. It was Kermesse at one of the villages yesterday — Sunday —
and we went to look. It was jolly. Onkel Stiilchen bought us a Herz —
a great heart of cake , covered with sugar , and sugar grapes , and sugar
roses , and a bird > a dove — and three pieces of poetry. It's rather
quaint. Strange , how deep symbolism is in your soil . Herr Stiilchen
brought up Hannah , since she was five years old. Her father was
killed — or died a while after the Franco-Prussian War . Now I am fond
of him.

Here , I am so respectable , and so good — it is quite a rest. We are not
dull. Hannah is really intelligent. We amuse ourselves a good deal with
my German. In three months here I should know quite a lot.

It's a quiet , dead little village — miles from everywhere — rather
pretty in a tame sort of way — a bit Englishy. Once they let me begin ,
I shall knock off quite a lot of work. There is that novel on my conscience.

I write in the morning , when one is wonderfully sane. Waldbrol is
good for my health — it is cooler , more invigorating. Trier was like a
perpetual Turkish bath. I like this air.

If you must go to England — must you? — go before I m leave
Waldbrol. Don't leave me stranded in some unearthly German
town. How are you? I am not going to sound worried over

[19]

. . "Not I, But the Wind . .

you, because I am so a bit. You might write to me and tell me a few
significant details. The tragedy will begin to slacken off from now , I
think.

I wrote to you yesterday , but it wasn't a nice letter, so I
didn't send it. Things are better, surely, and growing better —
oh yes!

FRIEDA VON RICHTHOFEN

Going Away Together

Waldbrol — Mittwoch

I have had all your three letters quite safely . We are coming on
quickly now. Do tell me if you can what is E . . ' s final decision .
He will get the divorce , I think , because of his thinking you ought to
marry me. That is the result of my letter to him. I will crow my little
crow , in opposition to you. And then after six months, we will be
married — will you? Soon we will go to Munich. But give us a little
time. Let us get solid before we set up together. Waldbrol restores me to
my decent sanity. Is Metz still bad for you — no? It will be better for me
to stay here — shall I say till the end of next week? We must decide what
we are going to do, very definitely. If I am to come to Munich next week ,
what are we going to live on? Can we scramble enough together to last us
till my payments come in? I am not going to tell my people anything till
you have the divorce. If we can go decently over the first three or four
months— financially — I think I shall be able to keep us going for the
rest. Never mind about the infant. If it should come, we will be glad,
and stir ourselves to provide for it— and if it should not come, ever — I
shall be sorry. I do not believe, when people love each other, in interfering
there. It is wicked , according to my feeling. I want you to have children
to me — I don't care how soon. I never thought I should have that
definite desire. But you see, we must have a more or less stable foundation
if we are going to run the risk of the responsibility of children — not the
risk of children, but the risk of the responsibility.

I think after a little while, I shall write to E . . . again. Perhaps
he would correspond better with me.

Can't you feel how certainly I love you and how certainly we shall be
married? Only let us wait just a short time, to get strong again. Two
shaken , rather sick people together would be a bad start. A little
waiting , let us have, because I love you. Or does the waiting make you

[21]

. “JVb/ I, But the Wind . . .

worse? — no , /10J w 0/2/? a time of preparation . Do you know ,

like the old knights , / to want a certain time to prepare myself— a
sort of vigil with myself Because it is a great thing for me to marry you,
not a quick , passionate coming together . / know in my heart “ here's my
marriage ” It feels rather terrible — because it is a great thing in my
life — it is my life — 1 am a bit awe-inspired — I want to get used to it.
If you think it is fear and indecision, you wrong me. It is you who
would hurry , who are undecided. It's the very strength and inevitability
of the oncoming thing that makes me wait , to get in harmony with it.
Dear God , I am marrying you, now, don' t you see. It's a far greater
thing than ever I knew. Give me till next week-end , at least. If you love
me, you will understand.

If 1 seem merely frightened and reluctant to you— you must forgive me.

I try, I will always try, when I write to you, to write the truth as near
the mark as 1 can get it. It frets me, for fear you are disappointed in me,
and for fear you are too much hurt. But you are strong when necessary.

Tou have got all myself— I don't even flirt — it would bore me very
much — unless I got tipsy. It's a funny thing, to feel one's passion — sex
desire — no longer a sort of wandering thing , but steady, and calm. I
think, when one loves, one's very sex passion becomes calm, a steady sort of
force, instead of a storm. Passion, that nearly drives one mad, is far
away from real love. I am realizing things that I never thought to
realize. Look at that poem I sent you — I would never write that to you.
I shall love you all my life . That also is a new idea to me. But I
believe it.

Auf Wiedersehen

D. H. Lawrence

L22 3

Going Away Together

Adr Herrn Karl Krenkow
Waldbrol — Rheinprovinz
14 May 1912

Yes , I got your letter later in the day — and your letter and E . . .'s
and yours to Garnett, this morning. In E . . Is, as in mine to E . .
see the men combining in their freemasonry against you. It is very strange.

I will send your letter to Garnett. I enclose one of his to me. It will
make you laugh.

With correcting proofs , and reading E . . .'s letter , I feel rather
detached. Things are coming straight. When you got in London , and
had to face that judge, it would make you ill. We are not callous enough
to stand against the public , the whole mass of the world's disapprobation ,
in a sort of criminal dock. It destroys us, though we deny it. We are all
off the balance. We are like spring scales that have been knocked about.
We had better be still awhile, let ourselves come to rest.

Things are working out to their final state now. I did not do wrong in
writing to E. .. . Do not write to my sister yet. When all is a “fait
accompli " then we will tell her, because then it will be useless for her to do
other than to accept .

I am very well, but, like you, I feel shaky. Shall we not leave our
meeting till we are better? Here, in a little while, I shall be solid again.
And if you must go to England, will you go to Munich first — so far? No,
I don't want to be left alone in Munich . Let us have firm ground where
we next go. Quakiness and uncertainty are the death of us. See, tell me
exactly what you are going to do. Is the divorce coming off? Arc you
going to England at all? Are we going finally to pitch our camp in
Munich? Are we going to have enough money to get along with? Have
you settled anything definite with E . . . ? — One must be detached ,
impersonal, cold, and logical, when one is arranging affairs. We do not
want another fleet of horrors attacking us when we are on a rather

[23]

. “ Not I, But the Wind . . .

flimsy raft — lodging in a borrowed flat on borrowed money .

Look , my dear , now that the suspense is going over , we can wait even a
bit religiously for one another . My next coming to you is solemn ,
intrinsically — / am solemn over it — not sad , o/z no — w my
marriage , all , and a great thing — notf a //zzVzg /a A* snatched and

clumsily handled. I will not come to you unless it is safely , and firmly.
When I have come , /Azz2g5“ j/za// not put us apart again. So we must wait
and watch for the hour. Henceforth , dignity in our movements and our
arrangements — no shufflings and underhandedness. And we must settle
the money business. I will write to the publishers , if necessary, for a sub.
I have got about £30 due in August — £24. due — and £25 more I am
owed. Can we wait, or not, for that?

Now I shall do as I like, because you are not certain. Even if I stay in
Waldbrbl a month, I won't come till our affair is welded firm. I can wait
a month — a year almost— for a sure thing. But an unsure thing is a
horror to me.

I love you — and I am in earnest about it — and we are going to make a
great — or, at least, a good life together. I'm not going to risk fret and
harassment, which would spoil our intimacy , because of hasty forcing of
affairs.

Don't think I love you less, in being like this. You will think so,
but it isn't true. The best man in me loves you. And I dread anything
dragging our love down.

Be definite, my dear; be detailed , be business-like. In our marriage, let
us be business-like. The love is there — then let the common-sense match it.

Auf Wiedersehen

D. H. Lawrence

This poetry will come in next month's English. I'm afraid you
won't like it. DHL

And I love you, and I am sorry it is so hard. But it is only a little
while — then we will have a dead cert.

[24]

Going Away Together

Waldbrol — Thursday

I have worked quite hard at my novel today. This morning we
went to see the Ascension Day procession , and it rained like hell on the
poor devils. Yesterday , when we were driving home , luckily in a closed
carriage , the hail came on in immense stones , as big as walnuts , the
largest. The place seemed covered with lumps of sugar.

You are far more ill than 1 am , /zoz#. Can t you begin to get well?
It makes me miserable to think of you so badly ojf the hooks. JVo, I am
well here. I am always well. But last week made me feel queer — in my
soul mostly — and I want to get that well before I start the new enterprise
of living with you. Does it seem strange to you? Give me till tomorrow
or Saturday week , will you? I think it is better for us both. Till the
twenty fourth or twenty-fifth, give me. Does it seem unloving and
unnatural to you? No? See, when the airman fell, I was only a weak spot
in your soul. Round the thought of me — all your fear. Don't let it be so.
Believe in me enough.

Perhaps it is a bit of the monk in me. No, it is not. It is simply a
desire to start with you, having a strong, healthy soul. The letters seem a
lotig time getting from me to you. Tell me you understand, and you
think it is — at least perhaps, best. A good deal depends on the start.
You never got over your bad beginning with E. . . .

If you want H . . or anybody, have him. But I don't want
anybody, till I see you. But all natures aren't alike. But I don't
believe even you are your best, when you are using H ... as a dose of
morphia — he's not much else to you. But sometimes one needs a dose of
morphia, I've had many a one. So you know best. Only, my dear,
because I love you, don't be sick, do will to be well and sane.

This is also a long wait. I also am a carcass without you. But
having a rather sick soul, I'll let it get up and be stronger

[25]

J)

. “ Not I, But the Wind .

before I ask it to run and live with you again .

Because , Pm not coming to you now for rest , fcz// to jtor/ living.
It's a marriage , no/ a meeting. What an inevitable thing it seems.
Only inevitable things — things that feel inevitable — are right . I am still
a trifle afraid , but I know we are right. One is afraid to be born , Pm
sure.

I have written and written and written. I shall be glad to know
you understand. I wonder if you'll be ill. Don't, if you can help it.
But if you need me — Frieda!

Vale!

D. H. Lawrence

[26]

Going Away Together

Waldbrol — Friday

That was the letter I expected — and I hated it. Never mind . 1
suppose I deserve it all. I shall register it up , the number of times
I leave you in the lurch: that is a historical phrase also. This is the
first time. “Rats” is a bit hard , as a collective name for all your men —
and you're the ship. Poor H ... , poor devil! Vous le croquez bien
entre les dents. I don't wonder E . . . hates your letters — they would
drive any man on earth mad. I have not the faintest intention of dying:
I hope you haven't any longer. I am not a tyrant. If I am, you will
always have your own way. So my domain of tyranny isn't wide. — I am
trying to think of some other mildly sarcastic things to say. Oh — the
voice of Hannah , my dear, is the voice of a woman who laughs at her
newly married husband when he's a bit tipsy and a big fool. You
fling H ... in my teeth. I shall say Hannah is getting fonder and
fonder of me. She gives me the best in the house. So there!

I think I've exhausted my shell and shrapnel. You are getting better ,
thank the Lord. I am better quite. We have both , I think, marvellous
recuperative powers.

You really seriously and honestly think I could come to Munich next
Saturday , and stay two months, till August? You think we could
manage it all right, as far as the business side goes ? I begin to feel like
rising once more on the wing. Ich komm—je viens — I come — advenio.

We are going to be married, respectable people, later on. If you were
my property, I should have to look after you, which God forbid.

I like the way you stick to your guns. It's rather splendid. We
won't fight, because you'd win, from sheer lack of sense of danger .

I think you' re rather horrid to H . . . You make him more babified —
baby-fied. Or shall you leave him more manly?

You make me think of Maupassant's story. An Italian workman , a

[27]

99

. “Not /, But the Wind

young many was crossing in the train to France , and had no money , and
had eaten nothing for a long time . There came a woman with breasts full
of milk — she was going into France as a wet nurse . Her breasts full of
milk hurt her — the young man was in a bad way with hunger . They
relieved each other and went their several ways . Only where is H . . .
to get his next feed? — Am I horrid?

Write to me quick from Munich , and I will tell them here. I can
return here in August .

Be welly and happy , 1 charge you ( tyranny )

D. H. Lawrence

[28]

. Going Away Together .

I found these letters by accident in my mother’s writing
desk after Lawrence’s death. At the time he wrote them,
I was in such a bewildered state of mind, the depth of their
feeling did not touch me, all I wanted was to be with him and
have peace. I have not found my letters to him.

[29]

Isartal

Last night I looked into the flames that leap in the big adobe
fireplace that Lawrence built with the Indians, here at the
ranch, in my room. He found an iron hoop to make the large
curve of the fireplace. I don’t know how he did it but the
chimney draws well, the big logs burn fast.

Those leaping flames seemed he himself flickering in the
night. This morning I found the wild red columbines that I
had first found with him. There they were at my feet, in the
hollow where the workmen have been cutting the logs for the
new house. A delicate blaze of startling red and yellow, in
front of me, the columbines, like gay small flags.

A rabbit stood still behind an oak shrub and watched me.
A humming-bird hummed at me in consternation, as startled at
me as I was at him. These things are Lawrence to me.

I shrink from remembering and putting down that almost
too great intensity of our life together. I resent committing to
paper for others to read what was so magic and new, our first
being together. I wanted to keep it secret, all to myself, secretly
I wanted to exult in the riches he gave me of himself and me and
all the world.

But I owe it to him and to myself to write the truth as well as
I can. I laugh at the claims of others that he might have loved
them and that he didn’t care for me at all. He cared only too
much. I laugh when they write of him as a lonely genius dying
alone. It is all my eye. The absolute, simple truth is so very
simple.

I laugh when they want to make him out a brutal,

[31]

. “JVrt /, But the Wind. . .

ridiculous figure, he who was so tender and generous and fierce.

What does it amount to that he hit out at me in a rage, when
I exasperated him, or mostly when the life around him drove
him to the end of his patience? I didn’t care very much. I hit
back or waited till the storm in him subsided. We fought our
battles outright to the bitter end. Then there was peace, such
peace.

I preferred it that way. Battles must be. If he had sulked
or borne me a grudge, how tedious!

What happened, happened out of the deep necessity of our
natures. We were out for more than the obvious or “a little
grey home in the West.” Let them jeer at him, those superior
people, it will not take away a scrap of his greatness or his
genuineness or his love. To understand what happened
between us, one must have had the experiences we had,
thrown away as much as we did and gained as much, and have
known this fulfilment of body and soul. It is not likely that
many did.

*

But here I am far from the little top floor in the Bavarian
peasant-house in the Isartal.

Lawrence had met me in Munich.

He had given up the idea of a lectureship at a German
University and from now on he lived by his writing. A new
phase of life was beginning for both of us. But on me lay still
heavily the children I had left behind and could not forget. But
we were together, Lawrence and I. A friend had lent us the
little top flat with its balcony, three rooms and a little kitchen.
The Alps floated above us in palest blue in the early morning.
The Isar rushed its glacier waters and hurried the rafts along in
the valley below. The great beechwoods stretched for hours
behind us, to the Tegernsee.

[32]

Isartal

Here we began our life together. And what a life! We had
very little money, about fifteen shillings a week. We lived on
black bread that Lawrence loved, fresh eggs, and “ripple”; later
we found strawberries, raspberries, and “Heidelbeeren.”

We had lost all ordinary sense of time and place. Those
flowers that came new to Lawrence, the fireflies at night and
the glow-worms, the first beech leaves spreading on the trees
like a delicate veil overhead, and our feet buried in last year’s
brown beech leaves, these were our time and our events.

When Lawrence first found a gentian, a big single blue one, I
remember feeling as if he had a strange communion with it, as if
the gentian yielded up its blueness, its very essence, to him.
Everything he met had the newness of a creation just that
moment come into being.

I didn’t want people, I didn’t want anything, I only wanted
to revel in this new world Lawrence had given me. I had
found what I needed, I could now flourish like a trout in a
stream or a daisy in the sun. His generosity in giving himself:
“Take all you want of me, everything, I am yours”; and I took
and gave equally, without thought.

When I asked him: “What do I give you, that you didn’t get
from others?” he answered: “You make me sure of myself,
whole.”

And he would say: “You are so young, so young!” When I
remonstrated: “But I am older than you.” — “Ah, it isn’t years,
it’s something else. You don’t understand.”

Anyhow I knew he loved the essence of me as he loved the
blueness of the gentians, whatever faults I had. It was life to
me.

“You have a genius for living,” he told me.

“Maybe, but you brought it out in me.”

But there were awful nights when he was still ill and feverish

[33]

. “Not /, But the Wind. . .

and delirous and I was frightened. Death seemed close. But
the shadow of sickness soon vanished in the healthy, happy life
we lived. He became strong, and full of energy and hope.

He would do nearly all the work of the small flat, bring the
breakfast to me with a bunch of flowers that Frau Leitner had
left on the milk jug in the early morning.

Frau Leitner had a shop underneath, with shoestrings and
sweets, and bacon and brooms and everything under the sun.
She gave Lawrence, whom she called “Herr Doktor,” tastes of
her “Heidelbeerschnapps,” talking to him in her Bavarian
dialect, while I, in a dream of wellbeing, would let time slip by.
When I spilt coffee on the pillow I would only turn the pillow
over. Nothing mattered except feeling myself live, and him.
We talked and argued about everything. Vividly he would
present to me all the people he had known in his youth, Walker
Street with all its inhabitants, the close intimate life of what, for
a better word, I called the common people; his mother, such a
queen in her little house, and his father, down at the pit,
sharing lunch with the pit-pony. It all seemed romantic to me.
And the colliers being drunk on Friday nights and battles
going on inevitably, it seemed, every Friday night in nearly all
the houses, like a weekly hysteria. I listened enchanted by the
hour. But poverty in his home was grievous. Lawrence would
never have been so desperately ill if his mother could have
given him all the care he needed and the food she could not
afford to buy for him with the little money she had.

Bitter it was to him when a friend at the high school who took
him home to tea, refused to continue the friendship as soon as he
heard Lawrence was a miner’s son. Then I would tell him
about my early life in Lorraine. Mine had been a happy
childhood. We had a lovely house and gardens outside Metz.
I lived through the flowers, as they came: snowdrops, scyllae

[34]

. Isartal .

and crocuses, the enormous oriental poppies in their vivid green
leaves so overwhelmingly near one’s small face, the delicate
male irises. My father would pick the first asparagus and I
would trot behind his bent back. Later in the summer I lived
on the fruit trees: cherry, pear, apple, plum, peach trees. I
would even go to sleep on them and fall off, sometimes, trying
to do my lessons up in them. I did not like school.

First I went to a convent, where I did not learn very much.
“Toujours doucement, ma petite Frieda,” they would say to
me as I came dashing into class with my Hessian boots. But it
was no use; I was a wild child and they could not tame me,
those gentle nuns. I was happiest with the soldiers, who had
temporary barracks outside our house for years. They invited
my sister Johanna and me to their big Christmas tree hung with
sausages, cigars, “hearts of gingerbread,” packages from home,
and little dolls they had carved for us. And they sang for us
accompanied by their mournful harmonicas:

“ Wenn ich zu meinem Kinde geh .”

Once my father’s old regiment acted the occasion on which
he had received his iron cross in the Franco-Prussian War. It
was on the Kaiser’s birthday. After the ceremony the soldiers
lifted my father on their shoulders and carried him through the
hall. My heart beat to bursting: “What a hero my father is!”

But a few days after one of my special friends, a corporal, told
me how he hated being a soldier, how bullied you were, how
unjust and stupid it all was, that military life. He stood there
talking to me in the garden path, in his bright blue uniform,
while he tied some roses. He had a mark over his bed for each
day he had still to serve, he told me. A hundred and nineteen
more there were, he said. I looked up at him and understood
his suffering. After that the flags of the dragoons and the

. “Not I, But the Wind . . .” .

splendid bands of the regiments had no longer the same
glamour as they passed along the end of the garden to the
Exerzierplatz.

When the regiments were filing past, Johanna and I sat on the
garden wall, very grandly. Then we would throw pears and
apples into the ranks. Great confusion would arise. An irate
major turned toward his men and yelled, we popped quickly out
of sight behind the wall, only to reappear and begin anew.

What I loved most of all was playing with my boy friends in
the fortifications around Metz, among the huts and trenches the
soldiers had built. I always liked being with boys and men.
Only they gave me the kind of interest I wanted. Women and
girls frightened me. My adolescence and youth puzzled me.
Pleasure and social stuff left me unsatisfied. There was some¬
thing more I wanted, I wanted so much. Where would I get it,
and from whom? With Lawrence I found what I wanted. All
the exuberance of my childhood came back to me.

*

One day I bathed in the Isar and a heel came off one of my
shoes on the rough shore; so I took both shoes off and threw
them into the Isar. Lawrence looked at me in amazement.
“He’s shocked, as I must walk home barefoot, but it’s a lonely
road, it doesn’t matter,” I thought. But it wasn’t that; he was
shocked at my wastefulness.

He lectured me: “A pair of shoes takes a long time to make
and you should respect the labour somebody’s put into those
shoes.”

To which I answered: “Things are there for me and not I for
them, so when they are a nuisance I throw them away.”

I was very untidy and careless, so he took great pains to
make me more orderly. “Look, put your woollen things in this

[36]

. Isartal .

drawer, in this one your silk clothes, and here your cotton
ones.”

It sounded amusing, so I did it.

When I said: “But I like to be like the lilies in the field, who
do not spin.”

“What! Don’t they just work hard, those lilies,” was his
reply. “They have to bring up their sap, produce their leaves,
flowers and seeds!” That was that. Later on he aroused my
self-respect. “You can’t even make a decent cup of coffee. Any
common woman can do lots of things that you can’t do.”

“Oh,” I thought, “I’ll show him if I can’t.” But that was
later on.

One day, in Munich, seeing all the elegant people in the
streets I had an aristocratic fit. I bought some handkerchiefs
with an F and a little crown on them. When I brought them
home he said: “Now I’ll draw my coat-of-arms.” He drew a
pickaxe, a school-board, a fountain pen with two lions rampant.
“When they make me a Lord, which they never will,” he said.
Then, half jokingly, but I took it seriously: “Would you like
me to become King of England?” I was distressed. “Isn’t he
satisfied, the whole universe is ours, does he want to be so dull a
thing as a king?” But I never doubted that he might have been
a king if he wanted to. Then he would write poems for me,
poems I took a little anxiously, seeing he knew me so well.

*

He would go for walks by himself, and his quick, light feet
coming home told me in their footfall how he had enjoyed his
adventure.

He would have a large, heroic bunch of flowers, or a tight
little posy for me or a bright bird’s feather.

Then the story of his adventure, a deer peeping at him

[37]

. “Not /, But the Wind . . .” .

inquisitively from the underbrush, a handsome Bavarian
peasant he had spoken to, how raspberries were just coming out,
soldiers marching along the road.

Then again we would be thrown out of our paradisial state.
Letters would come. The harm we had done; my grief for my
children would return red hot.

But Lawrence would console me and say: “Don’t be sad, I’ll
make a new heaven and earth for them, don’t cry, you see if I
don’t.” I would be consoled yet he was furious when I went on.
“You don’t care a damn about those brats really, and they
don’t care about you.” I cried and we quarrelled.

“What kind of an unnatural woman would I be if I could
forget my children?” Yet my agony over them was my worst
crime in his eyes. He seemed to make that agony more acute in
me than it need have been. Perhaps he, who had loved his
mother so much, felt, somewhere, it was almost impossible for
a mother to leave her children. But I was so sure: “This bond
is for ever, nothing in heaven or earth can break it. I must wait,
I must wait!”

My father had written: “You travel about the world like a
barmaid.” It was a grief to him, who loved me, that I was so
poor, and socially impossible.

I only felt wonderfully free, “vogelfrei” indeed. To Lawrence
fell the brunt of the fight, and he protected me. “You don’t
know how I stand between you and the world,” he said, later
on. If I supported him with all my might, the wings of his sure
spirit made a shelter for me always.

Now I lie writing by the stream, where it makes a little pool.
The bushes all around form an enclosed shelter for bathing,
while in front stretches the alfalfa field, then the trees,

[38]

. Isartal .

then the desert, so vast and changing with sun and shadow.
Curtains of rain, floating clouds, grey, delicate, thin but to
the west today white, large, round, billowing.

It is the end of June. I wonder if the strawberries are ripe,
in the hollow by the aqueduct, or if the wild roses are out, the
very pink ones, along the stream by the Gallina. Shall I see a
wild turkey, if I walk along the path Lawrence took so often,
I running behind, to the mouth of the Gallina?

He and Mr. Murry laid the big pipes on pillars of wood to
bring the water along. Where tall aspens stand and the Gallina
waters come tearing down. Often the pipes had to be fixed,
after a cloudburst had broken the whole thing down.

Here at the ranch we are alive and busy, but Lawrence will
see it no more.

Last night the coyotes have torn to pieces a young sheep, on
the ranch. Poor thing, that looked at me with scared sheep’s
eyes, when I drew near. How hateful coyotes are. Mr. Murry
tells me they even play with lambs, whisking their tails among
them, to get them away more easily. Nature sweet and pure!

This is one of the perfect moments here. The days are
swinging their serene hours across the immense skies, the sun
sets splendidly, then a star comes, and the young moon in
the old moon’s arms. The water sings louder than in the
daytime. More and more stars come as the light fades out of
the western sky.

But then, in the silence of the beautiful night, the coyotes, a
few yards from the house, tore the lamb to pieces. How I wish
someone would shoot them all, but they are hard to shoot.

Here I am in the present again, when I want to write of
the past. I will go back to I eking, our village in the Isartal, and

[39]

j'-'i'y'v ... » . . . . . ***hfbt T, Bttt the Wiiii d . . .” . ........ .-■**/« . .

that young Lawrence who was beginning to spread his wings.

I think of my going into a chapel, in a village near Beuer-
berg. I looked at the Madonna on the altar; she wasn’t a
mater dolorosa, nor of the spiritual sort, she was of the placid
peasant type, and I said to her: “Yes, you have a halo round
your head, but I feel as if I had a halo around the whole of
me, that’s how he makes me feel. You have nothing but a
dead son. It doesn’t seem good enough for me. Give me a
live man.”

Sitting on a little landing pier, once, by the Kochelsee,
dangling our feet in the clear water of the lake, Lawrence was
putting the rings of my fingers on my toes to see how they
looked in the clear water. Suddenly a shower overtook us.
There was a bunch of trees behind, and a road going in both
directions. We ran for shelter and must have run in opposite
ways. I looked all around but Lawrence was not there. A
great fear came over me, I had lost him, perhaps he was
drowned, slipped into the lake. I called, I went to look, some¬
how he had dissolved into the air, I should never see him again.
There was always this “not of the earth” quality about him.

By the time I saw him coming down the road, an hour later,
I was almost in hysterics. “Brother Moonshine” I called him,
as in the German fairytale. He didn’t like that.

Then he would sit in a comer, so quietly and absorbedly, to
write. The words seemed to pour out of his hand onto the
paper, unconsciously, naturally and without effort, as flowers
bloom and birds fly past.

His was a strange concentration, he seemed transferred into
another world, the world of creation.

He’d have quick changes of mood and thought. This puzzled
me. “But Lawrence, last week you said exactly the opposite
of what you are saying now.”

[40]

LAWRENCE [THE SMALLEST OF THE BOYS]

AND HIS FAMILY

. . Isartal . . . . . . . . . . .

“And why shouldn’t I? Last week I felt like that, now like
this. Why shouldn’t I?”

We talked about style in writing, about the new style
Americans had evolved — cinematographic, he called it.

All this idea of style and form puzzled Lawrence.

For my part, I felt certain that a genuine creation would
take its own form inevitably, the way every living thing does.

All those phrases “Art for art’s sake,” “Le style e’est
l’homme,” are all very well but they aren’t creation. But
Lawrence had to be quite sure in everything.

On some evenings he would be so gay and act a whole
revival meeting for me, as in the chapel of his home town.

There was the revivalist parson. He would work his congre¬
gation up to a frenzy; then, licking his finger to turn the
imaginary pages of the book of Judgment and suddenly darting
a finger at some sinner in the congregation: “Is your name
written in the book?” he would shout.

A collier’s wife in a little sailor straw hat, in a frenzy of repent¬
ance, would clatter down the aisle, throw herself on her knees in
front of the altar, and pray: “O Lord, our Henry, he would ’ave
come too, only he dursn’t, O Lord, so I come as well for him, O
Lord!” It was a marvellous scene! First as the parson then as
the collier’s wife Lawrence made me shake with laughter. He
told me how desperately ill he had been at sixteen, with in¬
flammation of the lungs, how he was almost dead but fought his
way back to life with the fierce courage and vitality that was his.
It made me long to make him strong and healthy.

Healthy in soul he always was. He may have been cross and
irritable sometimes but he was never sorry for himself and all
he suffered.

This poem was written in the Isartal:

."Not I, But thi Wind

I)

SONG OF A MAN WHO IS LOVED

Between her breasts is my home , between her breasts .

Three sides set on me space and fear , but the fourth side rests ,
Warm in a city of strength , between her breasts .

i4// day long I am busy and happy at my work
I need not glance over my shoulder in fear of the terrors that lurk
Behind . I am fortified \ I am glad at my work .

I need not look after my soul ; beguile my fear

With prayer , I need only come home each night to find the dear

Door on the latch , and shut myself in, shut out fear .

I need only come home each night and lay
My face between her breasts;

And what of good I have given the day, my peace attests.

And what I have failed in, what I have wronged
Comes up unnamed from her body and surely
Silent tongued I am ashamed .

And I hope to spend eternity

With my face down-buried between her breasts

And my still heart full of security

And my still hands full of her breasts.

[42]

FRIEDA IN BAVARIAN COSTUME

Walking to Italy

It is five o’clock in the morning. The air is fresh after last
night’s heavy rain. There is a slight mist, but the sun from the
desert is driving it away.

Suddenly it comes over me so strongly that Lawrence is
dead, really dead. The grief for his loss will be my steady com¬
panion for the rest of my life. Sometimes it will be a friend,
consoling me, putting everything in proper proportion. And
sometimes this grief will follow me, dogging my footsteps like
a hyena, not wanting me to live. Never will anything matter
so desperately any more.

I remember Lawrence saying to me: “You always identify
yourself with life, why do you?”

I answered: “Because I feel like it.”

I know now how completely he trusted his life to me, he in
whom death was always so near.

I hated that death and I fought against it like a demon,
unconsciously on my own. I did not know he was consumptive
till years later when the doctor in Mexico told me. All my life
with him there was this secret fear that I could not share with
him. I had to bear it alone. Then in the end I knew, and
it was an awful knowledge, that I could do no more. Death
was stronger than I. His life hung by a thread and one day
that thread would break. He would die before his time.

This true mountain morning takes me back to our journey
across the Alps.

It was in the middle of August that we set out gaily. Neither
of us ktycw Italy at the time, it was a great adventure for both.

[43 3

. “Not J, But the Wind . . .” .

We packed up our few possessions, three trunks went ahead of
us to the Lago di Garda. We set off on foot, with a rucksack
each and a Burberry. In the rucksack was a little spirit lamp,
we were going to cook our food by the roadside for cheapness.

We started on a misty morning very thrilled. The trees were
dripping* along the road, but we were happy in our adventure,
free, going to unknown parts. We walked along the solid green
of the valley of the Isar, we climbed up hills and went down
again. One of my desires, to sleep in haylofts, was fulfilled.
But sleeping in haylofts is uncomfortable, really. It rained so
much and we were soaked. And the wind blows through hay¬
lofts and if you cover yourself with a ton of hay you still can’t
get warm. Lawrence has described the crucifixes we passed,
the lovely chapel he found high up in the mountains. He lit
the candles on the altar, for it was evening, read all the ex-votos
and forgot how tired and hungry he was.

Here are some poems he wrote about this time:

Walking to Italy

ALL OF ROSES

I

By the Isar, in the twilight
We were wandering and singing:

By the Isar , in the evening

We climbed the huntsman's ladder and sat swinging
In the fir-tree overlooking the marshes;

While river met river , and the ringing

Of their pale-green glacier-water filled the evening .

By the Isar , in the twilight
We found our warm wild roses
Hanging red at the river; and simmering
Frogs were singing , and over the river closes
Was scent of roses , and glimmering
In the twilight , our kisses across the roses
Met , and her face, and my face, were roses .

II

When she rises in the morning
I linger to watch her.

She stands in silhouette against the window
And the sunbeams catch her
Glistening white on the shoulders:

While down her sides, the mellow
Golden shadow glows , and her breasts
Swing like full-blown yellow
Gloire de Dijon roses .

[45]

99

. “ Not I, But the Wind .

She drips herself with water
And her shoulders
Glisten as silver , they crumple up
Like wet and shaken roses , and I listen
For the rustling of their white , unfolding petals .

In the window full of sunlight
She stirs her golden shadow
And flashes all herself as sunbright
As if roses fought with roses .

III

Just a few of the roses we gathered from the Isar
Are fallen, and their mauve-red petals on the cloth
Float like boats on a river , waiting
For a fairy-wind to wake them from their sloth .

She laughs at me across the table, saying
She loves me, and I blow a little boat
Rocking down the shoals between the tea-cups
And so kiss-beladen that it scarce can float.

IV

Slow like a rose comes tip-toe out of bud
I see the woman's soul steal in her eyes,

And wide in ecstasy I sit and watch
The unknown flower issued magic-wise.

And day by day out of the envious bud
My treasure softly slips uncurled,

And day by day my happiness vibrates
In wide and wider circles round the world.

[46]

. Walking to Italy .

Lawrence’s birthday came as we were crossing the Alps. I
had no present to give him but some edelweiss. That evening
we danced and drank beer with the peasants in the Gasthaus
of the village we were passing through. His first birthday
together. It was all very wonderful. New things happened all
the time.

Here is a poem Lawrence wrote:

“ Not I, But the Wind

jj

MEETING AMONG THE MOUNTAINS

The little pansies by the road have turned
Away their purple faces and their gold;

And evening has taken all the bees from the wild thyme
And all the scent is shed away by the cold .

Against the hard pale-blue evening sky

The mountains ' new-dropped summer snow is clear

Glistening in steadfast stillness — clear

Like clean pain sending on us a chill down here.

Christ on the cross , his beautiful young man's body
Has fallen forward on the nails , and hangs
White and loose at last, with all his pain
Drawn on his mouth , eyes broken in the final pangs.

And slowly down the mountain road , a belated
Bullock waggon comes: Lo I am ashamed
To gaze any more at the Christ , whom the mountain snows
Whitely confront , my heart shrinks back , inflamed.

The breath of the bullock steams on the hard chill air;

The band across its brow , it scarcely seems
To draw the load , so slow and dull it moves
While the driver sits on the left-hand shaft and dreams .

Surely among your sunbrowned hand , some face, something
That vexes me with memory! He sits so still
Here among all this silence , crouching forward
Dreaming and letting the bullock take its will.

[48]

Walking to Italy

I stand aside on the grass to let them go,

And, Christ, again have I met his eyes , again
The brown eyes black with misery and hate, that look
Full into mine, and the torment starts again .

One moment the hate leaps at me standing there.

One moment I see the stillness of agony
Something frozen in silence , that dare not be
Loosed; one moment the darkness frightens me .

Then among the averted pansies, below the high
White peaks of snow, at the foot of the sunken Christ,

I stood in a chill of anguish trying to say
The joy I bought was not too highly priced .

But he was gone, motionless, hating me,

Enduring as the mountains do, because they are strong
But a pale dead Christ on the crucifix of his heart
And breathing the frozen memory of his wrong .

Still in his nostrils the frozen breath of despair,

And in his heart the half-numbed agony;

In his clenched fist the shame and in
His belly the smouldering hate of me.

And I, as I stand in the cold averted flowers.

Feel the shame that clenches his fists like nails through my own.
Feel the despair on his brow like a crown of thorns
And his frozen anguish turning my heart to stone.

Tuxtal.

[ 49 J

99

. “Not J, But the Wind

How I want to recapture the gaiety of that adventurous
walk into Italy, romantic Italy, with all its glamour and
sunshine.

We arrived at Trento, but alas for the glamour! We could
only afford a very cheap hotel and the marks on the walls,
the doubtful sheets, and worst of all the W.G.s were too
much for me.

The people were strangers, I could not speak Italian, then.

So, one morning, much to Lawrence’s dismay, he found me
sitting on a bench under the statue of Dante, weeping bitterly.
He had seen me walk barefoot over icy stubble, laughing at
wet and hunger and cold; it had all seemed only fun to me,
and here I was crying because of the city-uncleanness and the
W.C.s. It had taken us about six weeks to get there.

We took the train to Riva on the Lago di Garda. It was
an Austrian garrison town at that time. Elegant officers in
biscuit-coloured trousers and pale-blue jackets walked about
with equally elegant ladies. For the first time I looked at
Lawrence and myself; two tramps with rucksacks! Lawrence’s
trousers were frayed, Miriam’s trousers we called them, for
he had bought them with “Miriam.” I had a reddish cotton
crfipe dress all uneven waves at the skirt; the colour of the
red velvet ribbon had run into my panama hat. I was grateful
to the three ladies who took us into their pensione and, instead
of fearing the worst for their silver, sent us yellow and blue figs
and grapes to our room, where we cooked our meals on the
spirit lamp for economy, in fear and trembling of the housemaid.
Then we got our trunks.

My sister Johanna had sent me lovely clothes and hats,
some “Paquins,” much too elegant for our circumstances; but
we dressed up proudly and set forth in triumph.

. Walking to Italy .

At Gargnano we found Villa Igea to spend the winter.

Lawrence for the first time had a place of his own. The first
floor of a large villa, our windows looking over the lake, the
road running underneath, opposite us the Monte Baldo in
rosy sunsets. “Green star Sirius dribbling over the lake,” as
Lawrence says in one of his poems.

Here began my first attempt at housekeeping. It was uphill
work, in that big bare kitchen with the “fornelli” and the big
copper pans. Often the stews and “fritti” had to be rescued,
and he would come nobly from his work, never grumbling,
when I called: “Lorenzo, the pigeons are burning, what shall
I do?”

The first time I washed sheets was a disaster. They were so
large and wet, their wetness was overwhelming. The kitchen
floor was flooded, the table drenched, I dripped from hair to
feet.

When Lawrence found me all misery he called: “The One
and Only” (which name stood for the one and only phoenix,
when I was uppish) “is drowning, oh, dear!” I was rescued
and dried, the kitchen wiped and soon the sheets were hanging
to dry in the garden where the “cachi” were hanging red
from the trees. One morning he brought me breakfast in bed
and in the Italian bedroom there was a spittoon and to my
horror a scorpion was on it. To Lawrence’s surprise I said,
when he killed it: “Birds of a feather flock together.”

“Ungrateful woman . . . here I am the faithful knight
killing the dragons and that’s all I get.”

One of our favourite walks was to Bogliacco, the next village
on the Garda, where we drank wine and ate chestnuts with
the Bersaglieri who seemed quiet and sad and didn’t say
much. My window high up over the road was a joy to me,
Bersaglieri came past in their running march with a gay spark

[51]

. “Not /, But the Wind . . ” .

of a tencnte at their head, singing: “Tripoli sara5 Italiana.55
Secretly people did their bargaining under my windows, at
night the youths played their guitars; when I peeped Lawrence
was cross.

He was then rewriting his “Sons and Lovers,” the first book
he wrote with me, and I lived and suffered that book, and
wrote bits of it when he would ask me: “What do you think
my mother felt like then?55 I had to go deeply into the character
of Miriam and all the others; when he wrote his mother’s
death he was ill and his grief made me ill too, and he said:
“If my mother had lived I could never have loved you, she
wouldn’t have let me go.” But I think he got over it; only,
this fierce and overpowerful love had harmed the boy who
was not strong enough to bear it. In after years he said:
“I would write a different ‘Sons and Lovers’ now; my mother
was wrong, and I thought she was absolutely right.”

I think a man is born twice: first his mother bears him, then
he has to be reborn from the woman he loves. Once, sitting on
the little steamer on the lake he said: “Look, that little woman
is like my mother.” His mother, though dead, seemed so alive
and there still to him.

Towards the end of “Sons and Lovers” I got fed up and
turned against all this “house of Atreus” feeling, and I wrote
a skit called: “Paul Morel, or His Mother’s Darling.” He read
it and said, coldly: “This kind of thing isn’t called a skit.55

While we were at Villa Igea Lawrence wrote also “Twilight
in Italy,” and most of the poems from “Look! We Have Come
Through!”

His courage in facing the dark recesses of his own soul
impressed me always, scared me sometimes.

In his heart of hearts I think he always dreaded women, felt
that they were in the end more powerful than men. Woman

[52]

. Walking to Italy .

is so absolute and undeniable. Man moves, his spirit flies here
and there, but you can’t go beyond a woman. From her man
is bom and to her he returns for his ultimate need of body and
soul. She is like earth and death to which all return.

Here is a poem:

. “Not I, But the Wind

THE MOTHER OF SOM

This is the last of ally then , this is the last!

I must fold my hands , and turn my face to the fire y
And watch my dead days fusing into dross ,

Shape after shape , and scene after scene y from the past
Sinking to one dead masst in the dying fire
Leaving the grey ash cold and heavy with loss .

Strange he is to me, my sony whom I waited like a lover ;

Strange as the captive held in a foreign country , haunting
The shore and gazing out on the level sea;

White y and gaunt , with wistful eyes that hover
Always upon the distancey as his soul was chaunting
The dreary weird of departure from me .

Like a young bird blown from out of the frozen seasy
Like a bird from the far north blown with a broken wing
Into our sooty garden y he drags and beats
From place to place perpetually , and seeks release
From mey and the hound of my love that creeps up fawning
For his mastershipy while he in displeasure retreats .

I must look away from himyfor my fading eyes
Like a cringing dog at his heels offend him nowy
Like a toothless hound pursuing him with my eyes ,

Till he chafes at my cringing persistencey and a sharp spark flies
Into my soul from the sudden fall of his brow
Afid he bites his lip in pain as he hears my sighs.

[54]

Walking to Italy

This is the last — it will not be any more —

All my life I have borne the burden of myself
All the long years of sitting in my husband's house ,

And never have I said to myself as he closed the door:

“ Now I am caught . — You are hopelessly lost, O self

You are frightened with joy, my heart , like a frightened mouse”

Three times have I offered my soul — three times rejected —

It will not be any more — no more, my son, my son!

Never to know the glad freedom of obedience, since long ago
The angel of childhood kissed me and went . — I expected
A man would take me, and now, my son, oh my son
I must sit awhile and wait and never know
A bridegroom, till 5 twixt me and the bright sun

Death , in whose service is nothing of gladness, takes me .

— For the lips and the eyes of God are behind a veil ,

And the thought of the lipless voice of the Father shakes me
With fear and fills my eyes with tears of desire ,

But the voice of my life is dumb and of no avail.

And the hands in my lap grow cold as the night draws nigher.

[55]

. .. ...."Not I, But the Wind . . ” .

And always again the mail and tragedy. I was so sure I
would be able to be with my children but finally my husband
wrote: “If you don’t come home the children have no longer
any mother, you shall not see them again.” I was almost beside
myself with grief. But Lawrence held me, I could not leave him
any more, he needed me more than they did.

But I was like a cat without her kittens, and always in my
mind was the care, “Now if they came where would I put
them to sleep?” I felt the separation physically as if something
tore at my navel-string. And Lawrence could not bear it, it
was too much for him. And then again I would turn to him
and be healed and forget for a while.

Everybody seemed to condemn us and be against us and I
couldn’t for the life of me understand how the whole world
couldn’t see how right and wonderful it was to live as we did;
I just couldn’t. I said: “Lorenzo, why can’t people live as
happily and get as much out of life as we do? Everybody could,
with the little money we spend.” And he answered: “You
forget that I’m a genius,” half in fun and half seriously.

I wasn’t impressed by the genius at that time, making a long
nose at him, taking everything like the wind and the rain, but
now I know that the glamour of it all was his genius.

He was always absolutely sure of himself, sure that the Lord
was with him. Once we had a big storm on our way to Aus¬
tralia and I said, afraid: “Now, if this ship goes down . . .”
He answered: “The ship that I am on won’t go down.”

Here follow some letters he wrote to my sister Else:

[56]

Walking to Italy

Villa Igea
Villa di Gargnano
Lago di Garda
14 Deg. 1912

Dear Else:

I was not cross with your letter . I think you want to do the best for
Frieda . I do also . But I think you ask us to throw away a real apple for
a gilt one . Nowadays it costs more courage to assert one's desire and
needy than it does to renounce . If Frieda and the children could live
happily together , I should say “Go” because the happiness of two out of
three is sufficient . But if she would only be sacrificing her lifey I would
not let her go if I could keep her. Because if she brings to the children a
sacrifice , that is a curse to them . If I had a prayer , I think it would be
“ Lord , let no one ever sacrifice living stuff to me — because I am burdened
enough ."

Whatever the children may miss now , they will preserve their inner
liberty , and their independent pride will be strong when they come of age .
But if Frieda gave all up to go and live with them , that would sap their
strength because they would have to support her life when they grew up.
They would not be free to live of themselves — they would first have to live
for her, to pay back . It is like somebody giving a present that was never
asked fory and putting the recipient under the obligation of making
restitution , often more than he could afford .

So we must go ony and never let go the children , but willy will and will
to have them and have what we think good. That's all one can do. You
say: “ Lawrence kommt mir vor wie ein Held ” — I hope he may “ gehen dir
aus” similarly. He doesn't feel at all heroic , but only in the devil of a mess.

Don't mind how I write , will you?

Yours sincerelyy

D. H. Lawrence.

[57]

‘Not I, But the Wind

Villa Igea
Villa di Gargnano
Lago di Garda (Brescia)
io Feb. 1913

Dear Else:

You don't expect me to stay here , gaping like a fish out of water , while
Frieda goes careering and carousing off to Miinchen , do you? Je vous
en veux.

About the article — Frieda is a nameless duffer at telling anything — the
English Review — a shilling monthly , supposed to be advanced and
clever — asked me to write an article on modern German poetry — about
three thousand words. It is the modern , new stuff they want to hear about
— say that which is published in the last tenyears — such people as Dehmel9
and Liliencron , Stefan George , Ricarda Huch> Elsa Laska Schule .
Haven't you got a strong opinion about modern German poetry — pottery ,
as father calls it? Well , do write about what you think — say Dehmel is
ranty and tawdry , if you like , but don't be too classical. If you like> the
English Review will listen with great respect to dithyrambs on
beautiful printing and fine form in book issuing.

It will adore tendency , and influences. And for heaven's sake , put in
plenty of little poems or verses as examples. — It would be rather a cute
idea to write about: “ The Woman-Poets of the Germany of Today” or
“ The Woman-Poets of Germany Today."

It would fetch the English Review readers like pigeons to salt . And
surely Die Frau has got articles on the subject. I should love doing it
myself if I knew enough about it. ( Nicht wahr — I have reviewed , in
Englandy two anthologies of modern German Poetry.)

Do write about the women — their aims and ideals — and a bit about
them personally , any you know and how they'd rather paint pictures than
nurse children > because any motherly body can do the latter , while it

[58]

. Walking to Italy .

needs a fine and wonderful woman to speak a message . Didn't somebody
tell you that? Did she have red hair? Put it all in.

“ The Woman-Poets of Germany Today?' it sounds lovely. Do write
it in German — I can read your letters quite easily , because you don't
write in Gothic hieroglyphs.

It is beautiful weather here. We are finding the first violets. There
are bunches of primroses everywhere , and Leber Blumen, lovely little
blue things , and lilac-coloured crocuses . You must come , you would love
it y and we should feel quite grand having you for a visitor.

Mrs. K . . . has written, forwarding a lawyer's letter which was
sent to . . . , and which says: “We should advise . . . to refer . . .
to the Court , pending the divorce proceedings. Any request she had to
make concerning the children , should be made to the Court." That of
course necessitates the engaging of a solicitor.

Frieda says, it is too long to let the children wait another six months
without seeing her — they would become too much estranged. Perhaps that
is true. Heaven knows how we are going to untangle these knots. At any
rate the divorce is going forward; in England, after the first hearing , the
judge pronounces a decree nisi — that is, the divorce is granted unless
something turns up; then at the end of the six months the divorce is made
absolute, if nothing has turned up. Then Frieda is free again. Till the
divorce is absolute, E . . . must have nothing to do with Frieda. So
arrangements should be made through lawyers. But the children have
holidays only at Easter, and can anything be settled before then? We
shall have to see. This is to put you au courant. Send that wonderful
book , do. The sixty francs have come.

Frieda is sending a picture that I want to have framed for Prof. Weber
at Icking, but she says it is for you. And a thousand thanks.

D. H. Lawrence.

[59]

1913-1914

In the spring I went from the Villa Igea to Baden-Baden and
saw my father for the last time; he was ill and broken. “I don’t
understand the world any more,” he said.

Lawrence walked over the big St. Bernard with a friend.
We met in London after a fortnight to see my children and to
arrange about the divorce. We stayed with the Garnetts.
One morning I met my children on their way to their school.
They danced around me in complete delight. “Mama, you
are back, when are you coming home?”

“I can’t come back, you must come to me. We shall have to
wait.”

How I suffered not to be able to take them with me! So
much of my spontaneous living had gone to them and now this
was cut off. When I tried to meet them another morning they
had evidently been told that they must not speak to me and
only little white faces looked at me as if I were an evil ghost. It
was hard to bear, and Lawrence, in his helplessness, was in a
rage.

We met Katherine Mansfield and Middleton Murry at that
time. I think theirs was the only spontaneous and jolly friend¬
ship that we had. We had tea with Katherine in her flat in
London. If I remember rightly her room had only cushions
and pouffes and a large aquarium with goldfish and shells and
plants.

I thought her so exquisite and complete, with her fine brown
hair, delicate skin, and brown eyes which we later called her
“gu-gu” eyes. She was a perfect friend and tried her best to

[61]

. “Not I, But the Wind . . ” .

help me with the children. She went to see them, talked to
them and took them letters from me. I loved her like a younger
sister.

I fell for Katherine and Murry when I saw them quite
unexpectedly on the top of a bus, making faces at each other
and putting their tongues out.

We also met Cynthia and Herbert Asquith, at Margate.
Cynthia seemed to me lovely as Botticelli’s Venus. We also
saw Eddie Marsh and Sir Walter Raleigh and Cynthia’s
relations at her house, which was an unusual one, made all of
ship’s timber. Cynthia was always a loyal friend, even through
the war, when friends were rare.

But Lawrence wanted to go away from England, also because
the divorce was not finished. Later we returned to Bavaria.
There Lawrence wrote “The Prussian Officer.” The strange
struggle of those two opposite natures, the officer and his
servant, seems to me particularly significant for Lawrence.
He wrote it before the war but as if he had sensed it. The
unhappy, conscious man, the superior in authority envying the
other man his simple, satisfied nature. I felt as if he himself
was both these people.

They seemed to represent the split in his soul, the split
between the conscious and the unconscious man.

To grow into a complete whole out of the different elements
that we are composed of is one of our most elemental tasks. It
is a queer story and it frightened me at the time of the dark
corners of Lawrence’s soul, the human soul altogether. But his
courage in facing the problems and horrors of life always
impressed me. Often he was ill when his consciousness tried
to penetrate into deeper strata, it was an interplay of body and
soul and I in real agony would try to understand what was
happening. He demanded so much of me and I had to be there

[62]

. 1913-1914 . •••

for him so completely. Sometimes it was I who forced him to
go deeper and roused his inner conflict. When I went away it
was always terrible. He hated me for going away. “You use
me as a scientist his ‘dissecting rabbit,9 I am your ‘Versuchs
Kaninchen,9 99 I told him.

We wanted to go to Italy again.

The next winter we found a little cottage, “Fiascherino,"
near Lerici — finding a new more southern Italy and settling
down for a while like gipsies in their camp; always more
adventure.

We had a large piece of land with olive trees and vegetables
running down to the little bay where we bathed and kept a
flat-bottomed boat, on which Lawrence went out to sea
through the surf. I was on the shore watching him like a hen
who has hatched a duckling and yelled in a rage: “If you can’t
be a real poet, you’ll drown like one, anyhow."

Shelley was drowned not so far away. I spent lazy days
lying in a hammock watching the fishermen with their beautiful
red-sailed boats underneath my high rock. I watched the
submarines from Spezia bobbing up and down. We had a
maid, Elide, who looked after us and loved us, and her mother
Felice was mostly there too. “Bocca di mosca!" she would
shout at her daughter. They loved us quite ferociously; fought
to buy things cheaply for us in the market and felt absolutely
responsible for us. One of Elide9 s griefs was that Lawrence
would go out in his old clothes; she would rush after him with
another coat: “Signor Lorenzo, Signor Lorenzo,99 and force
him to put it on, which is more than I could have done. . . .
When I took her along to Spezia for Christmas shopping she
behaved as if she were attending the Queen of Italy at least,

[63]

9>

. “Not I ; But the Wind

much to my chagrin. Nothing was too good for “la mia
Signora. . . .”

Wc went once to visit the Waterfields at their lovely old
castle, “Aula,” near Sarzana. We slept there in such a terri¬
fically large room that it overwhelmed us, the beds looked so
tiny in the vast room that we brought them close together, to
make a larger spot in the vastness ... it was a beautiful
place, high up above the Magra, wide river arms underneath
. . . there were flowers growing on the wide fortress walls, a
dantesque sunrise; wc were impressed.

The cottage at Fiaschcrino had only three small rooms and a
kitchen and I tried to make it look as cheerful as possible; it did
not matter what I did with them, for we were out of doors most
of the day; had our meals outdoors and took long walks,
returning only when it grew dark, and built a fire in the
downstairs room. I believe the chief tie between Lawrence
and me was always the wonder of living . . . every little or
big thing that happened carried its glamour with it.

But we also had sordid blows. A New York publisher had
bought copies of one of Lawrence’s books and sent a cheque for
£25. As I had no money of my own, Lawrence said: “You
can spend that for yourself.” I took the cheque to the bank at
La Spezia where they told me the date was altered, the cheque
must go back to New York. It never returned. For that book
Lawrence never got any money from America for about twelve
years. Meanness made Lawrence always silently angry — it was
something not to be thought of, but dismissed, nothing to be
done, why waste your energy, then. But I, like a fool, talked
furiously when I’d been disappointed. We had many such
disappointments later on. With the dangerous quality of his
work he accepted his more than doubtful financial position and
I think one of my merits in his eyes was my never being eager

[64]

. 1913-1914 .

to be rich or to play a role in the social world. It was hardly
merit on my part, I enjoyed being poor and I didn’t want to
play a role in the world.

We had met many people who had villas round the bay of La
Spezia, English and American. They were friendly, but I said
to Lawrence: “I don’t want to be a fraud, let’s tell them that
we aren’t married; perhaps they won’t like us any more if they
know how it is.”

One charming Miss Huntingdon, who had become a
Catholic, was much distressed. “I am fond of you both,” she
wrote, “and far be it from me to judge you, but I must tell you
that I believe you are wrong, your life together is a mistake, a
sin.” Her deep distress made me feel sorry for her, as if she had
had to face the same problem and had chosen otherwise. But I
was aware of the joyful acceptance and hope in me, that for
my part I had chosen what was right. I don’t understand, to
this day, what social values really are and what meaning has
the whole social game; social standards were never real to
me, and the game didn’t ever seem worth the candle. That
winter in Fiascherino was a very happy one. He wrote “The
Rainbow” there, “The Sisters” it was called at first. When
Edward Garnett read it he didn’t like it. This upset Lawrence,
that Garnett did not follow his trend. But I said: “You are
fighting the old standards, and breaking new ground.” They
said I ruined Lawrence’s genius, but I know it is not so.

Lawrence was always busy, he taught me many songs, we
sang by the hour in the evenings; he liked my strong voice.
He sang with very little voice but, like a real artist that he was,
he conveyed the music and the spirit of the song in a marvellous
fashion.

We painted together, too. I can see him so absorbed and
intent, licking the brush, putting it down on the paper with

[65 j

. “JVof I, But the Wind

quick gestures, giving himself completely to everything he
was doing and not understanding that I did it all so carelessly
and for fun.

I remember the day the piano arrived from Spezia by sea in a
little boat and we watched it bobbing round the comer of the
foreland, with three Italians, very frightened, fearing to go to
the bottom of the sea with it. We felt for them, for it really
looked very dangerous. Then at last they pulled up on the
shingly beach and it was brought up to our little cottage with
terrific shouts of “Avanti, Italiani!”

Christmas came and we had Elide’s relations, about a dozen
peasants, in the evening and they sang to us, very much at
home with us. Elide’s old mother, Felice, sang: “Da quella
parte dove si lev il sol,” and “Di’ a la Marcella che lui so far
l’amor,” with old Pasquale, a duet. The beautiful Luigi was
there, who looked so handsome picking olives from the trees;
also the Maestro from Telaro, who was in love with Luigi; but
she was of higher station and he, alas, wasn’t in love with her.
I don’t know if they ever were married or not. But always the
tragedy came up ... it got me from time to time like an
illness. We had trespassed the laws of men, if not of God, and
you have to pay. Lawrence and I paid in full, and the others,
on the contrary, had to pay for want of love and tenderness, and
nobody likes to pay. Yet it’s an eternal human law: too much
happiness isn’t allowed us mere mortals. And I and Lawrence
seemed at times to surpass the measure of human bliss. He
could be so deeply and richly happy, that young Lawrence that
I have known, before the war crushed so much of his belief in
human civilization. . . . His deep natural love for his fellow-
men. . . . The deadness of them, the mechanicalness that
triumphed in their souls.

I asked: “What is civilization? What is it, this man-made

[66]

. 1913-1914 .

world that I don’t understand?”

And he said: “It’s like a tree that comes forth out of a race of
men, and it grows and flowers, and then it must die.” And
sometimes I think that Lawrence was the last green shoot on
the tree of English civilization. Anyhow, whether English
civilization is dead or not, and I hope it isn’t, Lawrence is the
last shoot of it that has grown ahead and pierced the air.

He was always so absolutely, undeniably, something. “They
can’t ignore me in the; long run,” he would say, with clenched
teeth, “they can’t get past me, much as they’d like to.” And
I think they can’t.

Life ratdes on so mechanically, there is less and less meaning
in its motor-hoots and in all the noise, all meaning is drowned.
Nobody has delicate courage enough to listen to the things that
give us genuine vibrating life. Our feelers for life, just quick
life, are atrophied.

When I think that nobody wanted Lawrence’s amazing
genius, how he was jeered at, suppressed, turned into nothing,
patronized at best, the stupidity of our civilization comes
home to me. How necessary he was! How badly needed!
Now that he is dead and his great love for his fellowmen is no
longer there in the flesh, people sentimentalize over him. . . .
Critics indeed! Had they been able to take instead of criticizing,
how much richer their own lives might have been!

Those wonderful mornings in our little podere, getting up
joyfully to that Mediterranean sun by the sea! And I’d walk
through the olive trees to Telaro, for the post. It took me, the
northerner, some time to see the beauty of these olive trees, so
different at different times; the wind running up them turns
them into quicksilver and sometimes they seem quite tired and
still and dark. During those early morning walks the sun threw
delicate quivering shadows on the stony, mossy path. To my

[67]

. . “Not /, But the Wind . . .” .

right was the sea. I wouldn’t have been surprised meeting
Christ and his disciples — it may be just as well that I didn’t.

Lawrence could well teach people how to live, how to be
grateful simply for life itself. He who was always so frail and so
much nearer death at every moment than most people, how
religiously he appreciated every good moment! Every big and
little thing! I hadn’t lived before I lived with Lawrence. It
was drudgery, grey tired days with endless efforts, before.
With him, being in love and ecstasy was only a small part of the
whole, always the whole and we two balanced in it, the universe
around us for us to take as much as we could, and we took a lot
of it in those eighteen years together.

Of his short life didn’t Lawrence make the most! It was his
deep sense of the reality of living. He knew what feeds the life-
flame in a creature, it isn’t Rolls-Royces or first-class hotels and
cinemas. He wasn’t a high-brow and he wasn’t a low-brow,
but with real genius he got out of the quick of living the
abiding values and said so in his writing. It is always amazing
to me how little people understand him. Misunderstand him, is
more like it.

I suppose when you are inside the pale you see only the pal¬
ings and think they are quite splendid, but once outside, you
realize how big the world is and the palings are just palings to
you. You look at them in surprise: all these insurmountable
obstacles, it was only rather low palings to climb over after all.
But for those who feel safe inside, let them, the palings don’t
care, neither does the bigger world.

He was quite aware of the hostility to him, but in those
days I don’t think we either of us measured the depth of it.
Also as he grew more and more, the antagonism grew. We
were too busy living to take much notice. Our own world,
so small and poor to others on the outside, what a strong,

[68]

. 1913-1914 .

unconquerable fortress it really was!

Another thing I understood: there was no “God-Almighti-
ness” about him, like the universal “I-am-everlasting” feeling
of Goethe, for instance. He knew “I am D. H. Lawrence from
my head to my toes, and there I begin and there I end and my
soul lives inside me. All else is not me, but I can have a
relationship with all that is not me in the world, and the more
I realize the otherness of other things around me the richer I
am.

It makes me laugh when I think of that American doctor
who “looked at literature” who wrote about Lawrence and saw
only a diseased prurient mind in him. I think all he wanted to
see was disease. Because Ursula, and Birkin, in “Women in
Love,” have a good meal with beetroot and ham and venison
pastry, he reads some horror into beetroot and ham and
pastry. I think the horror was in the good doctor’s mind, for
what horror is there in beetroot or ham or venison pastry?
Good to eat they are, that’s all. Lawrence was so direct, such a
real puritan! He hated any “haut-gout” or lewdness. Fine
underclothing and all the apparatus of the seducing sort were
just stupid to him. All tricks; why tricks? Passionate people
don’t need tricks.

♦

In the spring of 1914 Lawrence and I went from Fiascherino
to London. We stayed with a friend, Gordon Campbell,
whose wife was in Ireland. The house was in Kensington. We
saw a good deal of the Murrys and there were long discussions
between us all. Katherine was young and yet old, like a pre¬
cocious child. I never suspected so much sadness in her, then;
her relation with Murry seemed so fresh and young. *

We had a housekeeper, Mrs. Conybear, who sang “Angels
ever bright and fair” from the basement.

[69]

. ....“ Not I , But the Wind . . ” .

Campbell was very much in love with Ireland, “Areland” he
called it. At breakfast always sad and cross, about “Areland.”

I remember a ghastly Sunday afternoon when we wanted to
amuse ourselves. We went on one of the Thames boats to
Richmond — Campbell, Murry, Katherine, Lawrence and I —
there were a few seedy people on the boat — a sad object of a
man was playing “Lead, Kindly Light55 on a harmonium — we
got more and more silent with the dreariness of that enjoyment.
And then, further along, people threw sixpences from the boat
into that centuries-old, awful-looking Thames mud and small
boys dived for them — the Thames mud seemed to soak into our
very souls and soon we coukL stand it any more and left the
boat and got a bus to go home. Campbell, a dignified person,
trod on the conductor’s toe going on top and the conductor
said: “Hallo, clumsy,” to Katherine’s and my joy.

Finally I and Lawrence got married at a registrar’s office in
Kensington. Campbell and Murry went with us. On the way
there Lawrence dashed out of the cab into a goldsmith’s to buy
a new wedding ring. I gave my old one to Katherine and with
it she now lies buried in Fontainebleau.

It was quite a simple and not undignified ceremony. I didn’t
care whether I was married or not, it didn’t seem to make any
difference, but I think Lawrence was glad that we were
respectable married people.

On that first visit to London Lawrence’s writings were
already a little known and I thought: “What fun it is going to
be to know some amusing people.” But then, oh dear, we were
asked to lunch by a few lion huntresses and the human being in
me felt only insulted. You were fed more or less well, you sat
next to somebody whose name had also been printed in the
papers, the hostess didn’t know who or what you were, thought
you were somebody else, and wanted to shoo you away after

[70]

. 1913-1914 .

you were fed like chickens that had become a nuisance, and
that was all. So Lawrence and I hardly went anywhere.
What fun people might have had with us they never realized;
perhaps they had no fun in themselves. So Lawrence and I
were mostly alone.

A friend asked me once: “But wasn’t it very difficult,
Lawrence and you coming from a different class, wasn’t the
actual contact very difficult, wasn’t your sensitiveness offended?”

I don’t know whether it was the genius in Lawrence or the
man from the people in him, but I certainly found him more
delicately and sensitively aware of me than I ever imagined
anybody would be.

Once I bumped my head against a shutter and was a little
stunned and Lawrence was in such an agony of sympathy and
tenderness over it. It astonished me; when I had bumped my
head before or hurt myself nobody seemed to bother and I
didn’t see why they should have done so. To be so enveloped in
tenderness was a miracle in itself for me.

[71]

The War

And then the war came, quite out of the blue for us both.
Lawrence was on a walking tour in the Lakes with two friends
and I was in Lonon. After Lawrence came back, I remember
our having lunch with Rupert Brooke and Eddie Marsh. I see
Rupert Brooke’s strange fair skin, he blushed so easily, the
beauty of him was strangely sad. He was coming to stay with
us. Even then I thought: “He has had enough of life, it
wearies him.” He wasn’t a bit happy or fulfilled. I remember
Eddie Marsh saying: “There will be war, we fear, but it may
be that the Foreign Office and Earl Grey have averted it
today.”

But we couldn’t believe it. . . . War. . . .

But a politician had only said: “Bloody peace again.”

And then it was declared. At first it seemed only exciting.
. . . Exciting indeed! Nobody realized at first what hell,
what lowest demons, had been let loose.

We were at Charing Cross station and saw trains of soldiers
depart. Their women were there so pale and strained-looking,
saying good-bye, trying to be brave and not cry. It made me
weep for those unknown women and their sorrow. What did I
care whether these boys, boys so many of them, were English or
Russian or French. Nationality was just an accident and here
was grief. Lawrence was ashamed of my tears.

He himself was bewildered and lost, became abstract and
mental, and couldn’t feel any more. I, who had been-brought
up with all the “big-drumming” of German militarism, I was
scared.

[73]

.. . f|. . “Not I, But the Wind . . .” .

Lawrence was not a pacifist, he fought all his life. But that
“World War’* he condemned with all his might. The in¬
human, mechanical, sheer destruction of it! Destruction for
what end!

Then when Lloyd George came to power Lawrence lost all
hope in the spirit of his native country. Lloyd George, who
was so un-English, to stand for English prestige! It seemed
incredible.

War, more war! “Dies irae, dies ilia,” a monstrous disaster,
the collapse of all human decency. Lawrence felt it so. I could
feel only fear — all base instincts let loose, all security gone.

We were in a big crowd on Hampstead Heath one evening
going home from a friend’s house. In the sky, uncertain and
terrible amidst the clouds, hung a Zeppelin. “In that Zep¬
pelin,” I thought, “are perhaps men I have danced with when
I was a girl, boys I have played with, and here they come to
bring destruction and death. And if this dark crowd knew I
was a German they would tear me to pieces in their fear.”

Sadly we went home. So helpless we were, at the power of all
horrors. We took a small cottage out in Berkshire. Suspicion
was ever present. Even when we were gathering blackberries
in the nearby hedges a policeman popped up behind a bush anfi
wanted to know who we were. Lawrence, who comes out in the
open so courageously in his writings, why, why, do so many
people see a sinister figure in him? The darkness wasn’t in him
but in those others. There is a woman even now who boasts
that she turned us out of Cornwall as spies.

Our cottage was near the mill of Gilbert and Mary Cannan.
And the Murrys were an hour’s walk away in another cottage.
We would go over to them in the dark winter nights, through
bare woods and fields of dead cabbage stalks, with their smell of
rottenness.

[74]

. . . The War .

Campbell came to spend a week-end with us. He, who in
London had been so elegant, with spats and top-hat, now wore
an old cap and carried a very heavy stick under his arm. He
looked to me like an Irish tramp. He was still weeping over his
“Areland.”

Christmas came. We made the cottage splendid with holly
and mistletoe, we cooked and boiled, roasted and baked.
Campbell and Koteliansky and the Murrys came, and Gertler
and the Cannans. We had a gay geast. -

We danced on the shaky floor. Gilbert with uplifted head
sang: “I feel, I feel like an eagle in the sky.” Koteliansky sang
soulfully his Hebrew song: “Ranani Sadekim Badanoi.”
Katherine, with a long, ridiculous face, sang this mournful
song:

I am an unlucky man ,

I fell into a coalhole
I broke my leg ,

And got three months for stealing coal .

I am an unlucky man>

If it rained soup all day ,

I wouldrCt have a spoon ,

Pd only have a fork .

She also sang:

Ton sirop est doux , Madeleine ,

Ton sirop est doux .

Ne crie pas si forty Madeleine ,

La maison rCest pas d nous .

I liked this tune, but when I sang it Lawrence stopped me;
it was too “fast” for him. This occasion was the last •time for
years to come that we were really gay.

In the spring we went to stay with the Meynells in Sussex.

[75]

91

. . “JVW J, But the Wind

We were fond of all the sons and daughters. Monica was our
neighbour. We lived in the cottage that Violet had lent us.
I only remember Alice Meynell as a vision in the distance,
being led by Wilfred Meynell across the lawn like Beatrice
being led by Dante.

I heard while there of my father’s death. I did not tell any¬
body, I kept it to myself. When I told Lawrence he only said:
“You didn’t expect to keep your father all your life?” Bertrand
Russell invited Lawrence to Cambridge at that time. Lawrence
had expected much of this visit. “What did you do there?
What did they say?” I asked him, when he came back.

He answered: “Well, in the evening they drank port and
they walked up and down the room and talked about the
Balkan situation and things like that, and they know nothing
about it.”

We had met Lady Ottoline Morrell. She was a great in¬
fluence in Lawrence’s life. Her profound culture, her beautiful
home, “Garsington,” her social power, all meant much to
Lawrence.

I felt in those days: “Perhaps I ought to leave Lawrence to
her influence; what might they not do together for England? I
am powerless, and a Hun, and a nobody.” Garsington was a
refuge during the war for many people and stood as a strong¬
hold for freedom in those unfree days.

Later we took a small flat in the Vale of Heath. “The Rain¬
bow” appeared and was suppressed. When it happened I felt as
though a murder had been done, murder of a new, free
utterance on the face of the earth. I thought the book would
be hailed as a joyous relief from the ordinary dull stuff, as a way
put into new and unknown regions. With his whole struggling
soul Lawrence had written it. Then to have it condemned,
nobody standing for it — the bitterness of it! He was sex-mad,

[76]

. The War .

they said. Little even now do people realize what men like
Lawrence do for the body of life, what he did to rescue the
fallen angel of sex. Sex had fallen in the gutter, it had to be
pulled out. What agony it was to know the flame in him and see
it quenched by his fellowmen! “I’ll never write another word I
mean,” he said in his bitterness; “they aren’t fit for it,” and for a
time the flame in him was quenched.

It could not be for long; I remember with joy Frere’s words:
“Lawrence is like a man so far ahead on the road, that for
them he seems small.” When I think of his critics the words of
Heraclitus come into my mind:

“The Ephesians would do well to hang themselves, every
grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless lads, for
they have cast out Hermodorus, the best man among them,
saying: ‘We will have none who is best among us; if there be
any such, let him be so elsewhere and among others.’ ”

The best were treated so during the war. And in those dark
days I had a bad time. Naturally, I came in for all Lawrence’s
tortured, irritable moods. His sweetness had disappeared and
he turned against me as well as the rest for the time being. It
all made him ill. There was not even a little hope or gaiety
anywhere. We had a little flat in the Vale of Heath in Hamp¬
stead. He didn’t like the Vale of Heath and he didn’t like the
little flat and he didn’t like me or anybody else. . . . And the
war was everywhere. . . . We were saturated with war.

Cornwall

At Cornwall, near Zennor, we found Tregerthen cottage.
As usual we made it out of a granite hole into a livable place.
It cost five pounds a year rent. We had made it very charming.

[77]

. “Mot /, But the Wind . . ” .

We washed the walls very pale pink and the cupboards were
painted a bright blue. This was the entrance room; all very
small but well proportioned.

There was a charming fireplace on which lived two Stafford¬
shire figures riding to market, “Jasper and Bridget.’5 On the
wall was a beautiful embroidery Lady Ottoline Morrell had
embroidered after a drawing by Duncan Grant, a tree with big
bright flowers and birds and beasts. Behind the sitting room
was a darkish rough scullery, and upstairs was one big room
overlooking the sea, like the big cabin on the upper deck of a
ship. And how the winds from that untamed Cornish sea
rocked the solid little cottage, and howled at it, and how the
rain slashed it, sometimes forcing the door open and pouring
into the room.

I see Katherine Mansfield and Murry arriving sitting on a
cart, high up on all the goods and chattels, coming down the
lane to Tregerthen. Like an emigrant Katherine looked. I
loved her little jackets, chiefly the one that was black and gold
like bees.

It was great fun buying very nicely made furniture for a few
shillings in St. Ives, with the Murrys. The fishermen were
selling their nice old belongings to buy modern stuff. Our
purchases would arrive tied on a shaky cart with bits of rope,
the cart trundling down the uneven road. I think our best buy
was a well-proportioned bedstead we got for a shilling. Then
in both the Murrys’ neighbouring cottage and our own such a
frenzy broke out of painting chairs and polishing brass and
mending old clocks, putting plates on the dressers, arranging
all the treasures we had bought. After they had settled in their
cottage I loved walking with Katherine to Zennor. A high
wind she hated and stamped her foot at it. Later we’d sit in the
sun under the foxgloves and talk, like two Indian braves, as she

[78]

. The War .

said. We enjoyed doing things together. I can sec her round
eyes when Murry painted all the chairs black with Ripolin and
she said: “Look at the funereal procession of chairs.” She told
me many things from her life, but she told me them in con¬
fidence and trust.

Katherine and Lawrence and Murry had invented a place, a
wonderful place where we were all going to live in complete
bliss; Rananim it was called.

Lawrence thought of the new spirit of the life we would try
to live there. Murry thought of the ship, and its equipment,
that would take us to our island of Rananim. Katherine saw
all the coloured bundles that we would have to take. By the
hour we could talk Rananim.

There in Cornwall I can remember days of complete
harmony between the Murrys and us, Katherine coming to
our cottage so thrilled at my foxgloves, tall in the small window
seat. Since then whenever I sec foxgloves I must think of
Katherine.

One day we went out on the sea in bright sunshine in a boat,
and sang the canon:

Row, row , row your boat
Gently down the stream ,

Merrily , merrily , merrily , merrily ,

Life is but a dream .

I don’t know why even then this canon moved me so. They
were so strangely significant, those words. And I was so bad at
keeping my part of the song going, to Lawrence’s rage.

So much, so much was still ahead for us all. And all so
wonderful. At that time we were so poor, and such nobodies,
and yet so rich in dreams and gaiety! But then Lawrence
would have his reactions against all this, feel that his dreams

[79]

J5

. “Not /, But the Wind

were like petty vapourings, that the only real facts were war, and
a war of all the lower elements come uppermost, carrying all
before them. Grimly his soul would try to understand, but in
the end it could only hang on to its faith, to its own, own,
unknown God.

He had to go through with it, that I knew; also I knew —
however miserable I was, and he made me so — that there was a
man who suffered because of his vision.

He wanted people to be as they came out of the hands of the
Lord, not to violate them but gently adjust them to life in their
own capacity. He didn’t expect me to type. I hated it. Poor
as we were he never expected me to do it. “People should do
what they enjoy, then they’ll do it well,” he said.

In the first year of the war Cornwall was still not quite
engulfed by it; but slowly, like an octopus, with slow but dead-
sure tentacles, the war spirit crept up and all around us.
Suspicion and fear surrounded us. It was like breathing bad air
and walking on a bog.

I remember once sitting on the rocks with Lawrence, by the
sea, near our cottage at Tregerthen. I was intoxicated by the
air and sun. I had to jump and run, and my white scarf blew
in the wind. “Stop it, stop it, you fool, you fool!” Lawrence
cried. “Can’t you see they’ll think that you’re signalling to the
enemy!”

I had forgotten the war for a moment.

There was an unfortunate policeman from St. Ives. He had
to trot up so many times to our cottage to look over and over
again Lawrence’s papers, to see if he were really an English¬
man and his father without a doubt an Englishman, and if
his mother was English. This policeman once said to me:
“Oh, ma’am, if I dare only speak my thoughts, but I mustn’t.”
But he took the peas and beans I offered him from our field

[80]

. The War .

that Lawrence had ploughed with the help of William Henry
from the farm, and sown with vegetables. They came up
splendidly and lots of people had vegetables from this field
during the war.

Our standby and friend was Katie Berryman. Her saffron
cake and baked stuffed rabbit were our modest luxuries.

We had so little money, Lawrence not being wanted, nor
his work, in those days when profiteers and such men were
flourishing and triumphant. I remember his writing to Arnold
Bennett and saying: “I hear you think highly of me and my
genius, give me some work.”

Arnold Bennett wrote back: “Yes, I do think highly of
your genius, but that is no reason why I should give you
work.”

The war seemed to drive Lawrence to utter despair. He
was called up for inspection and told me about it afterwards.
“You have no idea what a pathetic sight all the men were in
nothing but their shirts.” How glad he was to come back to
his cottage and me!

Lawrence was fond of the people at Tregerthen Farm nearby.
Their Celtic natures fascinated him. He could talk by the
hour with William Henry, the farmer’s elder son, ruddy and
handsome.

In those days Lawrence seemed to turn against me, perhaps
on account of the bit of German in me. I felt utterly alone
there, on that wild Cornish moor, in the little granite cottage.
Often Lawrence would leave me in the evenings, and go over
to the farm, where he’d spend his time talking to William
Henry and giving French lessons to Stanley, the younger son.

Sometimes at night, in the dark, the door would fly open,
and it seemed as if the ancient spirits &nd ghosts of the place
blew into my cottage. In the loneliness I seemed to hear the

[ 81 ]

. “Not I, But the Wind . . ” .

voices of young men crying out to me from the battlefields:
“Help us, help us, we are dying, we are dying.” Despair had
blown in on the night. I thought how in the past women like
Catherine of Siena had influenced events. But now what could
any woman do to stem or divert this avalanche?

And then Lawrence would come home and want to quarrel
with me, as if he were angry with me because I too felt sad
and hopeless and helpless.

It was only at the very last, and out of one’s final despair,
that there arose a hope and a belief. But the outer world was
viler every day.

I remember coming home from Zennor with a loaf of Katie
Berryman’s bread in Lawrence’s rucksack. Coastguards sud¬
denly pounced on us from behind a hedge and said: “Let us
look at your rucksack, you have a camera in there.”

I could feel Lawrence swooning with rage. I opened the
rucksack and held the loaf of bread under their noses. I had to
show my contempt, if they hanged me for it the next moment.
I believe they would have liked to.

It was no wonder Lawrence went almost mad at times at
the creeping foulness around us; he who came out so com¬
pletely in the open. And I knew that he felt so helpless, as if
all that he believed in was utterly lost, he who by his genius
felt responsible for the spirit of his England, he whose destiny
it was to give England a new direction.

If only the war could end! But it went on, was present
wherever you went, there was no escaping it. One evening
at Cecil Grey’s place, Bosigran Castle, we were sitting after
dinner, when there came a knock at the door and four coast-
watchers stood there ominously.

“You are showing a light.”

To Grey’s dismay it was true. He had a new housekeeper

[82]

. . The War .

from London and the light from her bedroom could be seen
at sea.

As we stood there I shivered with alarm. I had before
this been under suspicion of giving supplies to the German
submarine crews. As for the suspicion, we were so poor at
the time — a biscuit a day we might have spared for the
submarines, but no more.

I took a secret pleasure in the fact that our coast-watchers
were all covered with mud. They had fallen into a ditch
listening under the windows.

Fortunately Grey had an uncle who was an admiral. That
saved him, and us. As for Lawrence, he just looked at those
men. What a manly job theirs was, listening under other
people’s windows!

A few days later I came home from Bosigran Castle to the
cottage. Lawrence was away, had driven to Penzance. In the
dusk I entered the cottage alone. Immediately I was inside I
knew by instinct something had happened, I felt overwhelming
fear. With shaking knees I went to the farm. Yes, I was told,
two men had asked for us.

I was full of foreboding, even though Lawrence, coming
home later, didn’t share my fear.

But then early next morning there appeared a captain, two
detectives, and my friend the policeman. The captain read
us a paper that we must leave the county of Cornwall in
three days. Lawrence, who lost his temper so easily, was quite
calm.

“And what is the reason?” he asked.

“You know better than I do,” answered the captain.

“I don’t know,” said Lawrence.

Then the two awful detectives went through all our cup¬
boards, clothes, beds, etc., while I, like a fool, burst into a rage:

[83]

G

. “Not /, But the Wind . . ” . ,

“This is your English liberty, here we live and don’t do
anybody any harm, and these creatures have the right to come
here and touch our private things.”

“Be quiet,” said Lawrence.

He was so terribly quiet, but the iron of his England had
stabbed his soul once more, and I knew he suffered more
than I.

In the background stood my friend the policeman, full of
sympathy. How sad I was, and desperate. But nothing could
be done, so we left Cornwall, like two criminals. When we
were turned out of Cornwall something changed in Lawrence
for ever.

We went to London where H. D. lent us her flat in Mecklen¬
burg Square. It had a very large room. Richard Aldington
was home on leave at the time and in the evening we met and
were very gay.

Where did we get the courage to be gay? I don’t know.

Lawrence invented wonderful charades. Once we played
the Garden of Eden. Lawrence was the Lord, H. D. was the
tree, Richard Aldington waving a large chrysanthemum was
Adam, and 1 was the serpent, and a little scared at my part.

A few days later Cynthia Asquith invited us to the royal
box that Lady Cunard had lent her at Covent Garden.

Lawrence trimmed his beard, we made ourselves very fine,
and went to listen to “Aida.”

Very few people wanted to be friendly to us in those days.
I was a Hun and Lawrence not wanted.

That was the time of air raids over London, the time there
was such a strain on people’s nerves. During the air raids we
were supposed to go into the cellar, but Lawrence always
refused to go; he stayed in bed. And it certainly was very
depressing being in the cellar with all the other gloomy people.

[84]

. The War .

So I spent my time during air raids running up and down
stairs imploring Lawrence to come to the cellar. But he’d
never do it.

We met Gertler in those days and he used to tell us funny
stories about his experiences during air raids, especially one
sudden one when he lost his head and kept running up and
down the stairs of a strange house. Campbell also told about
air-raid experiences, how once in Hampstead Heath he’d found
himself buried under a heap of terrified housemaids coming
home from a dinner party.

Yet underneath all this gaiety, we were so dulled and bitter.
“Dancing while Rome burns.” But if Nero enjoyed his burning
Rome, we did not. And Lawrence’s helplessness to stem this
lavaflood of death to all that is best in man made him savage
underneath and again I had a bad time. ... It was torture
to live, and to live with him.

I felt helpless and an outcast, and only a burden and a
difficulty for Lawrence.

I, the Hunwife in a foreign country!

Then we went to Hermitage in Berkshire. The country
there is so quiet and English with its woods. Our simple life
in the cottage healed him a lot.

I saw my son, who was in the O.T.C., and it seemed
terrible that he would have to fight against his own
relations, perhaps, and I said: “Let me hide you somewhere
in a cave or in a wood, I don’t want you to go and fight, I
don’t want you to be killed in this stupid war.” But he was
shocked.

All this time we were followed by detectives. Detectives
had even gone to my first husband and asked him if he knew
anything against me.

While we were there in Hermitage the armistice came. I

[85]

. "Not I, But the Wind . . ” .

nearly said peace came. But it was not peace, it is not peace
yet. The war has bred not peace but awful gargoyle children
of hate and resentment, and has only left death as the
desirable, clean thing, almost.

[86]

Lawrence and My Mother

Lawrence and my mother were fond of one another; she was
a wonderful mother to us, her three daughters. We were all
three different and yet she helped and understood us, and
was there for us in our hours of need — alas, there were plenty
of them for the three of us. But she was equal to all the awful
situations we found ourselves in. My eldest sister Else wanted
to study, when studying for women in Germany was still
infra dig.; I remember walking through the crowds of men
students into a lecture hall at Heidelberg with my sister at
sixteen and feeling like a real martyr. My sister Johanna
had lovely names for my mother, like “Goldfasanchen,” my
little golden pheasant — it was so quaint to hear her, worldly
and elegant, being so tender with my mother, and she half
loving it and saying: “What do you want now?” She had
taught me the love for poetry from early childhood. Especially
after the war she and Lawrence became great friends. She
lived in her “Stiff,” at Baden-Baden, a kind of home for
women, mostly widows of distinguished men, Excellencies and
so on. It was a very dignified life. We three sisters loved to
meet there and stay with my mother. We had to be on our
best behaviour, except in my mother’s beautiful rooms, where
all the wildness of our childhood came back, especially for my
sister Johanna and me. Lawrence sat on the sofa, happily,
while my mother tried to give him all the things for tea that
he liked — “Pumpernickel” and “TrOffelleberwurst” — and we
played wild games of bridge.

Sometimes, when Lawrence wanted to complain about

[87]

...... . “Motl, But the Wind . ..”... ..... - - - -

me she would say: “I know her longer than you, I know
her.”

He wrote his “Fantasia of the Unconscious” in the woods
behind the Altes Schloss. We stayed in a rough little inn at
Ebersteinburg. I remember that we had some friends to
dinner and a chicken flew into the soup tureen.

Then Lawrence, in the meagre after-the-war days, would
scour the country for some cream for her.

She was very happy in Lawrence’s life and mine, it meant
so much to her, but she always trembled that the women in
the Stift might read his books.

He was so polite to them and they liked him, again he was
the Herr Doktor.

At Ebersteinburg he would go out in the morning and take
‘his book and fountain-pen. I would find him later on, leaning
against a big pine tree; it was as if the tree itself helped him to
write his book, and poured its sap into it.

Then we would go down to Baden to my mother in the
afternoon and take her our wildflowers or some honey or fruit
or nuts; or we would go for long walks and make the place
our own as usual. Looking over the Rheintal or listening to
the music in the Kurpark. Baden was no longer the Baden of
Turgeniev and archdukes and grand dukes and the Prince of
Wales; no, it was after the war, would-be elegant.

Lawrence and my mother in her wisdom and ripeness under¬
stood each other so well. She said to me: “It’s strange that an
old woman can still be as fond of a man as I am of that
Lorenzo.”

Happy was their relationship. Only the last time, when my
mother was so frail and old herself, being with Lawrence who
was so very ill, they got on each other’s nerves, and when she
saw him often so irritable with me, she said: “He isn’t grateful

[88]

wmMk

Hr

FRIEDA S MOTHER

. . . • • • . Lawrence and My Mother . . * .

to you for all you do for him.” But I did not feel like that
myself; I was glad to do everything for him I possibly could.
It seemed little enough.

Then when she and I were going to meet for the first time
after his death, we were afraid to meet. She knew what his
death meant to me and I what it meant to her. So we avoided
our common grief; there was no need of words.

I remember after she had been indoors for weeks, coming to
Baden and taking her out on one of those first tender spring
days we get in the north, just the first whisper of spring. To
feel her respond to this coming renewal of the earth in an
almost sacred happiness was very moving to me.

I think after Lawrence’s death her desire to live left her.
Less than a year after he died telling me: “You have many
friends, you have much to live for yet,” I got a telegram:
“Come.”

I went but it was too late. In the train I listened as it were
to the sound of the wheels: “Is she still alive? Is she dead?”
At the door of the Stift I was told: “The Frau Baronin died
two hours ago.”

She lay for the last time in her bedroom, the rocks of the
Altes Schloss looking in through the window. “Lawrence is
there for me,” she had said. We, her three daughters, stood
by her bedside, she for the first time not welcoming me with
open arms as always. She lay with her silver hair like thistle¬
down, in gentle and peaceful death.

She who had sustained our lives for half a century with the
strength and harmony of her nature.

I remember my mother saying to me once: “But it’s always
you in Lorenzo’s books, all his women are you.” There was an
expression on her face I could not get. Is she pleased at this
or is she not? My sister Nusch was the only person that ever

[893

99

. “Not 7, But the Wind

could take a liberty with him. She could lightly jump on his
knee and say in her broken English:

“O Lorenzo, you are so nice, I like your red beard.” He
felt happy in the atmosphere of my mother and of us three
sisters, so free and open and gay. Only when my sister Nusch
and I had our long female talks, he did not like it, he had to
be in it.

Wc spent some weeks at Zell-am-See with Nusch, her husband
and children at her villa. We bathed and boated and Lawrence
wrote his “Captain’s Doll” there.

One day the peasants from my sister’s shooting-lodge high
up in the mountains brought us some honey and left. The
honey was found to be full of worms. “Hadu,” said Lawrence,
full of rage, to my nephew, “you and I will take this honey
back to them.” So up they marched to the lodge, in the heat
of the afternoon, Lawrence and Hadu, and arrived at the
peasant’s hut to find them in the midst of a meal; in the very
middle of the table Lawrence planted the jar of honey and
left without a word. The peasants remained petrified. “If
honesty, common-and-garden honesty goes,” Lawrence told
me once, “then all is lost, life becomes impossible.”

After the War

The first snow has fallen, it’s a still, black and white world.
All the gold of the autumn has gone. On the mountains it was
green-gold where the aspens turned, and the oakbrush was
red-gold and there was yellow-gold in the tall sunflowers all
along the road to Taos. The sage brush bloomed pale yellow
and the fields and openings of the woods were yellow with
small sunflowers. The mountains looked like tigers with their
stripes of gold and dark pine trees. And the golden autumn
sun lit it all. Now it has gone, this golden world: the frost and
the snow have taken it away. I am writing in the sun on the
snowy hill behind the cabins, where the Indians had their
camp; where Lawrence and I slept in the summer, years ago,
and again a grey squirrel scolded me for intruding; I wonder
if it is the same grey squirrel. The snow drips from the cedar
trees that are alive with birds; it is melting fast; in the desert
below it has gone. The pinto ponies look bright like painted
wooden toys against the snow. The black and white pigs follow
me grunting and the black cats look shiny and black on the
whiteness, delicately trotting after me. I have seen tracks of
wild turkeys, of deer and bears, in the Gallina. I am now
leaving that English autumn there in Berkshire, with its
blackberry hedges and mushroom fields and pale sunsets
behind a filigree of trees.

I am leaving Lawrence behind, who doesn’t want to come
to Germany so soon after the war. I go on my journey, a
nightmare of muddle, my trunks stolen. I arrive in Baden, so
glad to see my sisters and my mother, but, oh, so many, many

[91 ]

. . . . “Not I, But the Wind . . .” .

dead that had been our life and our youth. A sad, different
Germany.

We had suffered so much, all of us, lost so much. And
money was scarce.

Meanwhile Lawrence had gone to Florence and I went to
join him. I arrived at four o’clock in the morning. “You must
come for a drive with me,” he said, “I must show you this
town.” We went in an open carriage, I saw the pale crouching
Duomo and in the thick moonmist the Giotto tower disap¬
peared at the top into the sky. The Palazzo Vecchio with
Michelangelo’s David and all the statues of men, we passed.
“This is a men’s town,” I said, “not like Paris, where all statues
are women.” We went along the Lungarno, we passed the
Ponte Vecchio, in that moonlight night, and ever since Florence
is the most beautiful town to me, the lily town, delicate and
flowery.

Lawrence was staying at a pensione on the Lungarno with
Norman Douglas and Magnus.

The English there in Florence had still a sense of true hospi¬
tality, in the grand manner. And yet it struck me all as being
like “Cranford,” only it was a man’s “Cranford.” And the
wickedness there seemed like old maids’ secret rejoicing in
vrtekedness. Corruption is not interesting to me, nor does it
frighten me: I find it dull.

Nobody knows Norman Douglas that doesn’t know him in
German. When he talks German you know something about
him that you don’t know if you only know him in English. I
was thrilled at the fireworks of wit that went off between
Lawrence and Douglas. They never quarrelled. I understood
that Douglas had to stand up for his friend Magnus and to
Lawrence’s logical puritanical mind Magnus presented a
problem of human relations. When we had gone to Capri and

[92]

. After the War . . .

Magnus was in trouble at Montecassino, Lawrence went there
and lent him some money, and yet we had so very little then.

Later Magnus appeared at our Fontana Vecchia at Taor¬
mina, having fled from Montecassino. He came almost taking
for granted that we would be responsible for him, that it was
our duty to keep him. This disturbed Lawrence.

“Is it my duty to look after this man?” he asked me.

To me it was no problem. Had I been fond of Magnus, had
he had any meaning, or purpose — but no, he seemed only anti¬
social, a poor devil without any pride, and he didn't seem to
matter anyhow. With the money Lawrence had lent him, he
stayed at the best hotel in Taormina, to my great resentment,
we who could not afford to stay even in a second-rate hotel.
I felt he made a fool of Lawrence, and afterwards, when we
went to Malta, crossing second class from Palermo, whom
should I discover gaily swanking and talking to an English
Navy officer but Magnus on the first-class deck! The cheek of
the man! He had written to Lawrence: “I am sweating blood
till I am out of Italy.” I knew his sort, people always sweating
blood and always going to shoot themselves. But Magnus,
anyhow, did commit suicide at the end. It was a shock, but
there was nothing else for him to do. It seemed to me he had
put his money on the wrong horse. He thought the splendour
of life lay in drinking champagne, having brocade dressing
gowns, and that kind of thing. But Lawrence felt deeply dis¬
turbed by Magnus and did feel a responsibility for him.

There is a letter from Douglas to Lawrence in which Douglas
says: “Go ahead, my boy, do as you like with Magnus's work.”
Lawrence wanted to pay the Maltese young men who had
helped Magnus, hence the publication of Magnus’s lhemoirs
with Lawrence’s introduction.

From Florence we went to Capri. I didn’t like Capri; it was

[93]

>}

. "Not /, But the Wind

so small an island, it seemed hardly capable to contain all the
gossip that flourished there. So Lawrence went to Sicily and
took Fontana Vecchia for us, outside Taormina.

Living in Sicily after the war years was like coming to life
again. Fontana Vecchia was a very simple but big-roomed
villa.

Here are letters of Lawrence to my mother:

[94]

After the War «

Fontana Vecchia
Taormina
Sicilia
i 6 March

Meine Hebe Schwiegermutter :

Your post card came this morning . I do hope you will be feeling
better . Frieda is in Rome, doing her passport . I hope by the time you
have this card she will be with you. It will make her happy to nurse
you and get you better. Soon you must be about walking — and then I
will come to Germany and perhaps we can all go away into the Schwarz -
wald and have a good time. Meanwhile I sit in Fontana Vecchia , and
feel the house very empty without F. Don't like it at all: but don't
mind so long as you will be better.

I am having my portrait painted: hope that today will be the last
sitting , as I am tired. I look quite a sweet young man , so you will
feel quite pleasant when I send you a photograph. The weather is once
more sunny and beautiful , the sea so blue , and the flowers falling from
the creeper.

I have no news as yet from F. from Rome , but hope she is managing
everything easily . I am all right in Taormina: people invite me to
tea and dinner all the time. But I don't want to go very badly. I am
correcting the MS. of my diary of a Trip to Sardinia , which I think
will amuse you. Give my love to Else . Tell me if there is anything I
can send: and do get better soon.

D. H. L.

[95]

'Not I, But the Wind .

Fontana Vecchia
Taormina, Sicily
Sunday, Dec. io

Dear Mother-in- Law:

I am glad you got the cheque . But don't trouble about being grateful .
The money is there , all right , and enough said .

Frieda does not want any. We had a piece of luck. The professor
of English Literature in Edinburgh gave me a prize: a hundred pounds
for " The Lost Girl ” That is a piece of luck. I hope to have the
money next week. A hundred pounds is a nice little sum.

Please , mother-in-law , send 500 marks to Hadu and the rest.

We don't send any Christmas parcels , the post is so difficult here in
Italy. But when the book arrives I will send it to you. I am so glad
that you are feeling well. But go carefully before Xmas. Go on still ,
small feet and don't get overbearing and drunk.

D. H. L.

A thousand white horses on the hard blue sea and the sailing ships
run anxiously with half a wing .

Frieda has made a hundred good " Seckerlef very good — made them
this morning.

(Translated from the German)

[96]

After the War

Fontana Vecchia

I am not working at the present time . I wrote three long stories
since we are here — that will make quite a nice book . I also collected
my short stories ready for a book . So , for the moment I am free , I dortt
want to begin anything else, only perhaps translate a grey Sicilian novels
“ Maestro Don Gesualdo ” by Giovanni Verga . It is pure Sicilian and
you can see in it how heavy and black and hopeless are these Sicilians
inside. Outside so beautiful , inside horror and money. No, mother-
in-law, here out of Europe nothing new can come forth. They can only
go on chewing the same old strings. The Banca di Sconto, perhaps the
biggest bank in Italy, has failed , does not pay and such a black cloud
over the people here. Money is the blood of an Italian . He says it
himself: “ Vuole il sangue mio — he wants my blood f if he has to pay .
But it is also cruel. Very likely the Government will come and help f
the people. ... '

(Translated from the German)

[97]

'Not I, But the Wind . . .»

Fontana Vecchia
Taormina, Sicily

Dear Mother-in-Law:

We must find a good ship . Maybe we'll leave next month , but not
for sure . And if we go to America and I can earn some money , we can
easily return to Germany and see you. If one only has the dollars , then
America is no further from Baden than Taormina , perhaps not as far.
You know it well.

I have had a little influenza, it was very cold, the snow came nearer
and nearer down the mountains. Monte Venere was white, also our
own Monte Riretto. But right near to us the snow could not reach ,
the sea said no, and now, thank God, it is warm as summer, the snow
has flown away, the sea is blue, and the almonds are busy flowering.
Many thousands of birds came down with the cold — goldfinches, black •
birds, redbreasts, redtails , so gay and coloured , and thank goodness,
cartridges are so dear that the Italians can't buy them.

Frieda also wants to write a word. We sit in the salotto, warm
and still , with the lamp on the table. Outside, through the door, I see
like twilight, the moonlit sea; and the moon through the begonia leaves of
our terrace; and all quite still, except from time to time the stove crackles.
If I think that we are going away I feel melancholy. But inside I feel
sure, that I must go. This is a beautiful end, but belter a difficult
beginning than only an end.

Greet all. Tell Else I had all the letters: and Friedel writes English
so well. He'll think little of my German. I am so glad you have Annie
with you and are not alone these long winter evenings.

Keep well always. I'll write again soon. Make a bow for me to all
the ladies of the Stift in my name.

Your son-in-law,

D. H. Lawrence.

(Translated from the German)

[98-]

After the War

Fontana Vecchia

Taormina

Sicily

Sunday

My dear Mother-in-Law:

We sit waiting to depart — 4 trunks — one household trunk , 1 book
trunk , Friedas and mine, two small valises, a hatbox, and two very
small bags:Qust like Abraham going to a new land.) My heart is
trembling now, mostly with pain — the going away from home and the
people and Sicily. But I will forget it and only think of palms and
elephants and monkeys and peacocks. Tomorrow at 10:34 we leave
here: eat at Messina , where we must change, arrive at 8:30 at Palermo ,
then to the Hotel Panormus where our friend lives. Thursday to Naples
by boat , there at the Hotel Santa Lucia. Then on the S.S. “ Osterley ”
Orient Line , to Ceylon. The ship goes on to Australia. You have the
address — Ardnarce , Lake View Estate, Kandy, Ceylon. Think, it is
only 14 days from Naples. We can always return quickly when we've
had enough . Perhaps Else is right and we shall return to our Fontana.
I don't say no: I don't say anything for certain. Today I go, tomorrow
I return. So things go. Pll write again from Palermo if there's time.
I think of you.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[99]

* Not /, But the Wind .

R.M.S. “Osterley”

Tuesday, 28 February

My dear Mother-in-Law:

We have been gone for two days . We left Naples Sunday evenings
8 o'clock . Monday morning at 8 o'clock we came through the Straits
of Messina and then for hours we saw our Etna like a white queen
or a white witch there standing in the sky so magic-lovely . She said to
me, “ You come back here," but I only said , “No," but I wept inside
with grief grief of separation . The weather is wonderful — blue sky ,
blue sea, still. Today we see no land , only the long thin white clouds
where Greece lies. Later on we shall see Crete ( Candia ). We arrive
on Thursday at Port Said . There this letter goes on land. We also
for a few hours. Then we go through the Suez Canal and so into the
Red Sea. This ship is splendid , so comfortable , so much room and
not many passengers. The berths are not half taken. It is just like a
real luxury hotel . In the morning at seven o'clock comes the steward
with a cup of tea. — If you want to take a bath and if cold or hot or
how . At 8 o'clock the breakfast gong rings and such a menu — cooked
pears, porridge , fish, bacon, eggs, fried sausages, beefsteak, kidneys ,
marmalade, all there. Then afterwards one sits about, flirts or plays
croquet . Eleven o'clock comes the steward with a cup of Bovril. One
o'clock lunch — soup, fish, chicken or turkey, meat, entries , always much
too much. Four o'clock tea, 7 o'clock dinner. Ah no, one eats all the
time. But you also have an appetite at sea, when it is still and so
heavenly like now. I find it strange that it is so still, so quiet, so civilized.
The people all so still and so easy and such a cleanliness, all so comforU
able. Yes, it is better than Italy. The Italians are not good now ,
everything becomes base. Frieda caught a cold in Naples, and you ought
to see how good the steward and stewardess are with her as she lies in
bed. They come so quickly with tea or soda water or what she wants

1 100 3

. After the War .

and always such gentle manners . After Italy it is extraordinary . Yes ,
civilization is a beautiful and fine thing if it only remains alive and
does not become ennui . I can write to you again from Aden and then
not again before Ceylon . Now I go down and see if Frieda has got up.
Her cold is better today .

I am sorry you were not there to see us go on board at Naples , with
trunks and bits and pieces — baskets of apples and oranges {gifts) and
a long board that is a piece of a Sicilian wagon painted very gaily
with two scenes out of the life of Marco Visconte . Else knows how
beautiful are these Sicilian carts and the facchini are always crying:
“ Ecco la Sicilia — Ecco la Sicilia in viaggio per V India!" For the
moment a rivederci .

Frieda also ought to write a word .

D. H. L.

The whole afternoon we have seen Crete with snow on the mountains —
so big the island. Also another little island , all yellow and desert with
great ravines . Now the sun is down , the rim of the sky red , the sea
inky blue and the littlest , finest , sharpest moon that I ever saw. It is
already quite warm.

Wednesday

Today only warm and still. Seen no land — seagulls and two ships.
Tomorrow morning we arrive at Port Said — letters must be posted
tonight before io o'clock .

D. H. L

t ]

'Not J, But the Wind

R.M.S. “Osterley”

Tuesday, 7 March
Arabian Sea

Dear Mother -in-Law:

Perhaps I can post this letter at Aden this evening , but we do not
stop . We have come so far and so lovely . We stopped three hours in
Port Said \ and it was quite like the Thousand and One Nights . It
was 9 o'clock in the morning , and the ladies of Port Said were all
abroad shopping . Little black waddling heaps of black cripe and two
houri eyes between veil and mantle . Comic is the little peg that stands
above the nose and keeps veil and headcloth together . There came a
charabanc with twenty black women parcels . Then one of the women
threw back her veil and spat at us because we are ugly Christians . But
you still see everything — beggars , water carriers , the scribe who sits
with his little table , and writes letters , the old one who reads the
Koran , the men who smoke their " chibouks ” in the open cafi and on
the pavement — and what people! Beautiful Turks , Negroes , Greeks ,
LevantineSy Fellaheen, three Bedouins out of the desert like animals9
Arabs , wonderful . Fto have taken coal on board \ and thdn at midday
off again into the Suez Canal , and that is very interesting . The Canal
is eighty-eight miles long , and you can only travel five miles an hour.
There you sit on this great ship and you feel really on land, slowly
travelling on a still land ship . The shores are quite nearyyou can surely
throw an orange at the Arabs that work on the shores. Then you see
beautifully , wonderfully , the Sahara Wtiste, or desert — which do you
say? The waterway goes narrow and alone through red-yellow sands .
From time to time Arabs with camels work on the shores and keep on
shouting "Halloy Hallo ” when the big ship passes so slowly. In the
distance little sharp sand hills so red and pink-gold and sharp and the
horizon sharp like a knife edge so clear. Then a few lonely palms,

[ 10a ]

. . . . After the War .

lonely and lost in the strong light y small y like people that have not
grown very tall.

Then again only sand y gold-pink and sharp little sand hillsy so sharp
and defined and clear y not like reality but a dream . Solemn evening came9
and we so stilly one thought we did not seem to move any more . Seagulls
flew about like a sandstormy and a great black bird of prey alone and
cruely so black between thousands of white screaming y quick-flying sea
birds. Then we came to the Dead Seayflat seas that extend very far y
and slowly the sun sank behind the desert with marvellous colours y and
as the sun had set , then such a sky like a sword burning green and
pink. Beautiful it wasy I have never seen anything so superhuman.
One felt near to the doors of the old Paradise y I do not know howy but
something only half human , something of a heaven with grey-browedy
overbearing and cruel angels. The palm trees looked so little the angels
should be much bigger and every one with a sword. Tesy it is a frontier
country.

Next morning we were in the Red Sea. There stands Mount Sinai y
red like old dried bloody naked like a knife and so sharpy so unnaturally
sharpy like a dagger that has been dipped in blood and has dried long
ago and is a bit rusty and is always there like something dreadful
between man and his lost Paradise. All is Semitic and cruely nakedy
sharp. No treey no leaf no life: the murderous will and the iron of
the idea and ideal — iron will and ideal. So they stand y these dreadful
shores of this Red Sea that is hot like an oven without air. It is a strange
exit through this Red Sea — bitter. Behind lie finally Jerusalemy Greecey
Rome and Europe y fulfilled and past — a great dreadful dream. It began
with Jews and with Jews it ends. You should see Sinaiy then you
could know it. The ideal has been wicked against men and Jehovah is
father of the ideal and Zeus and Jupiter and Christ are only sons. And
God be praised Sinai and the Red Sea are past and consummated.

Yesterday morning we came through the Straits of Bab-el- Mandeb ,
again into the open. I am so glad that we came this way. Yesterday

[ 103 ]

. . “Not I9 But the Wind . . .”. .

we always saw land — Arabia naked and desert but not so red and sharp
and like dried blood . Today we see no land but later on we shall pass
Cape Socotra . This ship has gained fifteen hours . We are fifteen
hours before time . Perhaps we arrive in Colombo on Sunday evening
instead of Monday . It is very warm , but there is always air. The sea
is covered with little white sea-horses, but the ship is still and sure.
We have not had one single bad moment. All here on board so friendly
and so good and comfortable . I work on the translation of “Maestro
Don Gesualdo ” and I let my inkpot fall on the deck. The “ Osterley ”
shall wear my black sign for ever. At 1 1 o'clock in the morning we
do not get Bovril any more , but ice cream. The women all wear
colourful summer frocks. In the evening we dance. We see now the
little flying fish. They are all silver and they fly like butterflies , so wee.
There are also little black dolphins that run about like little black pigs .

Benediciti ,

D. H. Lawrence.

[104]

. After the War .

Fontana Vccchia had a large podere to it. Great “vaschc”
were on the rocky slope toward the sea, pools of green water
to feed the lemon and orange trees. The early almond blossoms
pink and white, the asphodels, the wild narcissi and anemones,
all these we found during our walks, nothing new would escape
Lawrence and we never got tired finding new treasures.

We went on a jolly expedition to Syracuse with Renee and
John Juta and Insole. Trains had their own sweet way in Italy
then and arrived when they felt like it. I remember being
much impressed by how Renee Hansard, with the experience
of a true colonial, was fortified with a hamper of food and a
spirit lamp so we could have tea at any time.

She pulled out her embroidery with its wools from a neat
little bag. She turned the railway car into a live little tem¬
porary home. The quarries of Syracuse impressed me much.
Here at Syracuse the flower of the Athenian youth had been
defeated; in these quarries the Greek men had been put to
starve while the ladies of Syracuse took their walks along the
top of the quarries to see them slowly die. A sinister dread
impression it left in me. I doubt whether centuries can clean
a place of such inhumanity, the place will retain and remember
such horrors. Syracuse and its splendour have gone. Man is
more cruel than nature but whenever he has been so he pays
for it.

Of our winter excursion to Sardinia Lawrence has described
every minute, it seems to me, with extraordinary accuracy.

Garibaldi, the picturesque, had begun his campaign here
in Sicily with his thousand, with his Anita and his South
American experience.

Along our rocky road the peasants rode past into the hills
on their donkeys, singing loudly, the shepherds drove their
goats along, playing their reed pipes as in the days of the

1 105]

1)

. . “JVb<7, But the Wind

Greeks. We had an old Greek temple in the garden; there was
the beautiful Greek theatre at Taormina, facing the Etna; what
a marvellous stage for a play, not a modern play, alas, but how
I longed to see one of the old giants like Sophocles there. How
I longed for the old splendour of life to come back to us in
those shabby after-the-war days.

“Give me a little splendour, O Lord,” would be my prayer.

There in Taormina, in the whole of Sicily, one could feel
the touch of the hands of many civilizations: Greek and
Moorish and Norman and beyond into the dim past.

Old Grazia did our shopping and I loved watching Lawrence
doing the accounts with her, her sly old Sicilian face spying
his, how much she could rook him.

“She can rook me a little, but not too much,” he would say,
and he kept a firm hand on her.

The sun rose straight on our beds in the morning, we had
roses all winter and we lived the rhythm of a simple life, getting
up early, he writing or helping in the house or getting the
tangerines from the round little trees in the garden or looking
at the goat’s new kids. Eating, washing up, cleaning the floor
and getting water from the trough near the wall, where the
large yellow snake came to drink and drew itself into its hole
in the wall again.

Wherever Lawrence was, the surroundings came alive so
intensely. At the Fontana Vecchia we mostly cooked on char¬
coal fires, but on Sundays he lit the big kitchen stove for me,
and I, who had become quite a good cook by now, made
cakes and tarts, big and little, sweet pies and meat pies and
put them on the side-board in the dining room and called
them Mrs. Beeton’s show.

Once we had lunch with three friends at their villa. It was
a jolly lunch. We had had some white wine that seemed

[i°6]

. . . After the War .

innocent, but it was not. When we left, going home, I felt its
effects but soon got over it.

“We must hurry, because those two English ladies arc
coming to tea.”

So we hurried home and unfortunately the white Sicilian
wine affected Lawrence later. The very English ladies came
and Lawrence was terribly jovial and friendly with them. I
tried to pull his sleeve and whispered: “Go away,” but it was
no use.

“What are you telling me to go away for?” he said.

I could see the two visitors being very uneasy and wanting
to leave.

“No, no, you must have some mimosa, I’ll get you some,”
Lawrence insisted. So he went with them through the garden,
tried to climb a small mimosa tree and fell.

The ladies hurried away.

Next day Lawrence was chagrined and he met one of the
ladies and tried to apologize to her, but she was very stiff with
him, so he said: “Let her go to blazes.”

I think from this incident arose the story that Lawrence was
a drunkard. Poor Lawrence, he who could not afford wine
and didn’t want it, who was so naturally abstemious. I have
seen him drunk only twice in all my life with him.

We stayed at Taormina in the heat and I remember when
the mulberries were ripe and delicious and he climbed a big
mulberry tree in his bathing suit. The mulberries were so
juicy and red and they ran down his body so that he looked
like one of those very realistic Christs we had seen on our walk
across the Alps years ago.

He wrote “Birds, Beasts and Flowers” and “Sea and Sar¬
dinia” at Fontana Vecchia, and also “The Lost Girl.” “Sea
and Sardinia” he wrote straight away when we came back

1 107 ]

. “Not /, But the Wind . . ” .

from Sardinia in about six weeks. And I don’t think he altered
a word of it. His other works, especially the novels, he wrote
many times, parts of them anyhow. Sometimes I liked the first
draft best, but he had his own idea and knew the form he
wanted it to take.

One day I found the manuscript of “Sea and Sardinia” in
the W.C. at Fontana Vecchia. So I told him: “But why did
you put it there, it’s such a pity, it’s so nicely written and
tidy.” I had then no idea it might have any value, only
regretted the evenly written pages having this ignominious end.
But no, he had a passion for destroying his own writing. He
hated the personal touch.

“I would like to burn all my writing. Print is different.
They can have it in print, my stuff.”

Just as he wanted Lawrence, the private person, separate
from Lawrence the writer, the public man. He guarded his
privacy ferociously. He liked best to meet people who knew
nothing about him. He really disliked talking about his
writing. “They don’t like it, anyhow,” he would say. But I
read every day what he had written; his writing was the
outcome of our daily life.

I had to take in what he had written and had to like it.
Then he was satisfied and did not care for the approval of the
rest of the world. What he wrote he had lived and was sure of.
Travelling with him was living new experiences vividly every
minute.

Then from Fontana Vecchia, we were really leaving Europe
for the first time.

We did so much with the little money we had, making
homes and unmaking them.

[108]

. After the War . . .

We unmade our beloved Fontana Vecchia and went to
Palermo where the “facchini” were so wild and threw them¬
selves on our luggage; I can see Lawrence struggling amongst
a great crowd of them, waving his umbrella about, equally
wild. It was midnight and I was terrified.

An American friend gave me the side of a Sicilian cart I had
always longed for. It had a joust painted on one panel, on the
other St. Genevieve. It was very gay and hard in colour. I
loved it. Lawrence said: “You don’t mean to travel to Ceylon
with this object?”

“Let me, let me,” I implored. So he let me. And off we set
for Naples. There we were bounced in the harbour into our
P. & O. boat. We arrived nearly too late, the gang-plank was
pulled up immediately the minute we got on board. How we
enjoyed that trip! Everybody feeling so free and detached, no
responsibility for the moment, people going to meet husbands
or wives, people going to Australia full of the wonders that
were coming to them, and Lawrence being so interested and
feeling so well. How tenderly one loves people on boats! They
seem to become bosom friends for life. And then we went
through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea, Arabia Deserta on
one side, so very deserta, so terrifying. Then one morning I
woke up and I was sure I could smell cinnamon; the ship
stopped and we were in Colombo. It struck me: “I know it
all, I know it all.” It was just as I expected it. The tropics, so
marvellous these black people, this violent quick growth and
yet a little terrifying, a little repulsive, as Lawrence would say.
We stayed with the Brewsters in a huge bungalow with all
those black servants in the background. In the morning the
sun rose and we got up and I always felt terrified at* the day
and its heat. The sun rose higher and the heat would rise. We
went for a walk and I saw a large thing coming towards us,

[ 109]

. . “Not I, But ike Wind . . .” . ..

large like a house, an elephant holding a large tree with its
trunk! Its guide made him salaam to us, the great animal —
young natives would come and pay visits to us and the Brew¬
sters, who were interested in Buddhism. Lawrence became so
terribly English and snubbed them mostly. Some young
Cingalese said I had the face of a saint! Didn’t I make the
most of it and didn’t Lawrence get this saint rubbed into him!
Then we had the fantastic experience of a Pera-Hera given in
honour of the Prince of Wales. Such a contrast was the elegant
figure of the Prince sitting on the balcony of the Temple of the
Tooth amongst the black seething tropical mass of men. The
smell of the torches and the oily scent of dark men. Great
elephants at midnight, and the heat in the dark. The noise of
the tom-toms that goes right through some dark corner in one’s
soul. The night falls so quickly and the tom-toms begin and
we could see the native fires on the hills all around. Noises
from the jungle; those primeval cries and howls and the brain-
fever bird and the sliding noises on the roof and the jumps in
the darkness outside. How could one rest under such a darkness
that was so terribly alive!

The climate didn’t suit Lawrence and we had to leave.
Lawrence was not well and happy in Ceylon. The tropics
didn’t suit him.

I was so enthralled with the life around us, it was like living
in a fairy-tale. We would go to Casa Lebbes, a little jewelshop
at Number i Trincomalee Street in Kandy, and look at his
jewels. He would pull out a soft leather bundle, undo it, and
put before our eyes coloured wonders of sapphires, blue and
lovely yellow ones, and rubies and emeralds. Lawrence bought
me six blue sapphires and a yellow one: they were round in
order to make a brooch in the form of a flower. The yellow
one was the centre and the blue petal-shaped ones formed a

[no]

. . . . After the War . .

flower round it. Also he bought me a cinnamon stone and a
little box of moonstones. The blue sapphire flower I have lost,
as I have lost so many things in my life, and the moonstones
have disappeared, only the cinnamon stone remains. I wanted
to go to Australia; it attracted me. Off we set again, trunks,
Sicilian cart, and all, and went to Perth. Only Englishmen
and Australians on the boat and it really felt as if one was
going to the end of the earth.

We stayed only a little while near Perth and went a long
way into that strange vague bush, everything so vague and
dim, as before the days of Creation. It wasn’t born yet. Vague,
remote, and unborn it made one feel oneself. There we stayed
with Miss Skinner, whose manuscript Lawrence was looking
over: “The Boy in the Bush.” Later on, as I look back, it’s
all vague to me. Then, after a few weeks, we went on to
Sydney.

We arrived in Sydney Harbour — nice it was not knowing a
soul.

A young officer on the boat had told me: “The rain on the
tin roofs over the trenches always made me think of home.”
Sydney!

And there they were, the tin roofs of Sydney and the beautiful
harbour and the lovely Pacific Coast, the air so new and clean.
We stayed a day or two in Sydney, two lonely birds resting a
little. And then we took a train with all our trunks and said:
“We’ll look out of the window and where it looks nice we’ll
get out.” It looked very attractive along the coast but also
depressing. We were passing deserted homesteads: both in
America and Australia, these human abandoned efforts make
one very sad. Then we came to Thirroul, we got out at four
and by six o’clock we were settled in a beautiful bungalow
right on the sea. Lined with jarra the rooms were, and there

C III]

»>

. . “Not I, But the Wind

were great tanks for rain water and a stretch of grass going
right down to the Pacific, melting away into a pale-blue and
lucid, delicately tinted sky.

But what a state the bungalow was in! A family of twelve
children had stayed there before us: beds and dusty rugs all
over the place, torn sailing canvases on the porches, paper all
over the garden, the beautiful jarra floors grey with dust and
sand, the carpet with no colour at all, just a mess, a sordid
mess the whole thing. So we set to and cleaned, cleaned and
cleaned as we had done so many times before in our many
temporary homes! Floors polished, the carpet taken in the
garden and scrubbed, the torn canvases removed. But the
paper in the garden was the worst; for days and days we kept
gathering paper.

But I was happy: only Lawrence and I in this world. He
always made a great big world for me, he gave it me whenever
it was possible; whenever there was wonder left, we took it,
and revelled in it.

The mornings, those sunrises over the Pacific had all the
wonder of newness, of an uncreated world. Lawrence began
to write “Kangaroo” and the days slipped by like dreams, but
real as dreams are when they come true. The everyday life
was so easy, the food brought to the house, especially the fish
cart was a thrill: it let down a flap at the back and like pearls
and jewels inside the cart lay the shiny fishes, all colours, all
shapes, and we had to try them all.

We took long walks along the coast, lonely and remote and
unborn. The weather was mild and full of life, we never got
tired of the shore, finding shells for hours that the Pacific had
rolled gently on to the sand.

Lawrence religiously read the “Sydney Bulletin.” He loved
it for all its stories of wild animals and people’s living experi-

[ ”2]

. After the War . . . .

enccs. The only papers Lawrence ever read were the “Corriere
della Sera,” in the past, and the “Sydney Bulletin.” I wonder
whether this latter has retained the same character it had then;
I haven’t seen it since that time. It was our only mental food
during that time.

I remember being amazed at the generosity of the people at
the farms where we got butter, milk, and eggs; you asked for a
pound of butter and you were given a big chunk that was
nearly two pounds; you asked for two pints of milk and they
gave you three; everything was lavish, like the sky and the sea
and the land. We had no human contacts all these months: a
strange experience: nobody bothered about us, I think.

At the library, strangely enough, in that little library of
Thirroul we found several editions of Lawrence’s condemned
“Rainbow.” We bought a copy — the librarian never knew that
it was Lawrence’s own book. Australia is like the “Hinterland
der Seele.”

Like a fantasy seemed the Pacific, pellucid and radiant,
melting into the sky, so fresh and new always; then this primal
radiance was gone one day and another primeval sea appeared.
A storm was throwing the waves high into the air, they rose on
the abrupt shore, high as in an enormous window. I could see
strange sea-creatures thrown up from the deep: sword-fish and
fantastic phenomena of undreamt deep-sea beasts I saw in
those waves, frightening and never to be forgotten.

And then /driving out of the tidy little town into the bush
with the little pony cart. Into golden woods of mimosa
we drove, or wattle, as the Australians call it. Mostly red
flowers and yellow mimosa, many varieties, red and gold,
met the eye, strange fern trees, delicately leaved. #We came
to a wide river and followed it. It became a wide water-
fair and then it disappeared into the earth. Disappeared and

[ IX3 ]

. “ Not I, But the Wind . . . , .

left us gaping. Why should it have disappeared, where had
it gone?

Lawrence went on with “Kangaroo” and wove his deep
underneath impressions of Australia into this novel. Thirroul
itself was a new little bungalow town and the most elegant
thing in it was a German gun that glistened steely and out of
place there near the Pacific.

I would have liked to stay in Australia and lose myself, as
it were, in this unborn country but Lawrence wanted to go to
America. Mabel Dodge had written us that Lawrence must
come to Taos in New Mexico, that he must know the Pueblo
Indians, that the Indians say that the heart of the world beats
there in New Mexico.

This gave us a definite aim and we began to get ready for
America, in a few weeks.

[ 1 *4 ]

After the War

Darlington
West Australia
15 May 1922

My dear Mother-in-Law:

So the new Jews must wander on . Frieda is very disappointed .
She had hoped to find a new England or new Germany here , with much
space and gayer people .

The land is here , sky high and blue and new as if you9 d never taken
a breath out of it: and the air is new , new , strong , fresh as silver .
And the country is terribly big and empty , still uninhabited . The bush
is grey and without end . JV0 flaw* — — azzz/ o/Azte /nz/ifo of

the gum-trees , a// a little burnt: a wood and a prewood , mrt a jungle:
something like a dream , zz twilight wood that has not seen the day
yet. It needs hundreds of years before it can live. This is the land
where the unborn souls , strange and unknown , that will be born in
five hundred years, live. A grey , strange , and the people that

are here are not really here: only like ducks that swim on the surface
of a lake. But the country has a fourth dimension and the white
people float like shadows on the surface . And they are not new people:
very nervous , neurotic , they don't sleep well , as if they always felt a
ghost near. I say , a new country is like sharp wine in which floats
like a pearl the soul of an incoming people , till this soul is melted or
dissolved. But this is stupid.

Thursday we go on by the P. & 0 . boat “ Malwa ” to Adelaide ,
Melbourne , and Sydney . We stay at Adelaide a day , sleep a night
at Melbourne , and arrive at Sydney on the twenty-seventh: nine days
from Fremantle . That will be interesting. We have our tickets from
Colombo to Sydney. It does please me to go on further. I think from
Sydney we may go on to San Francisco , and stay a few weeks at Tahiti •
And so round the world.

[ 115]

1

55

. “ Not I, But the Wind

Oh, mother-in-law, it must be so! It is my destiny, this wandering.
But the world is round and will bring us back to Baden.

Be well.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[n6]

After the War

“Wyewurk”

Thirroul

New South Wales
Australia
28 May 1922

Meine liebe Schwiegermutter :

Diesmal schreibe dir auf Englisck , ich muss schnell sein. We got
to Sydney on Saturday , after a fine journey . I like the P. & 0. boats ,
with the dark servants . But that was a frightful wreck of the “Egypt”
in the Bay of Biscay . We heard of it in Adelaide. Our captain of
the “ Malwa ” changed from the “Egypt” only this very voyage . He
was very upset — so was everybody. They say the Lascar servants are so
bad in a wreck — rushing for the boats. But I don't believe all of it.

Anyway , here we are safe and sound. Sydney is a great fine town ,
half like London , half like America. The harbour is wonderful — a
narrow gateway between two cliffs — then one sails through and is in
another little sea, with many bays and gulfs . The big ferry steamers
go all the time threading across the blue water , and hundreds of people
always travelling .

But Sydney town costs too much , so we came down into the country.
We are about fifty kilometres south of Sydney , on the coast. We have
got a lovely little house on the edge of the low cliff just above the Pacific
Ocean. — Der grosse oder stille Ozean , says Frieda. But it is by no
means still. The heavy waves break with a great roar all the time: and
it is so near. We have only our little grassy garden — then the low cliff—
and then the great white rollers breaking , and the surf seeming to rush
right under our feet as we sit at table. Here it is winter , but not cold.
But today the sky is dark , and it makes me think of Cornwall. We
have a coal fire going , and are very comfortable. Things go so quietly
in "Australia. It will not cost much to live here, food is quite cheap.

[ ”7]

99

. “Not I, But the Wind

Good meat is only fivepence or sixpence a pound — 50 Pfg. ein P/und.

But it is a queer, grey, sad country — empty, and as if it would
never be filled. Miles and miles of bush— forlorn and lost. It all feels
like that. Yet Sydney is a huge modern city.

ytl don't really like it, it is so raw — so crude. The people are so crude
in their feelings — and they only want to be up-to-date in the “ con¬
venience: s” — electric light and tramways and things like that. The
aristocrats are the people who own big shops — and there is no respect
for anything else. The working people very discontented — always
threaten more strikes — always more socialism.

I shall cable to America for money, and sail in July across the
Pacific to San Francisco — via Wellington, New Zealand, Rarotonga,
Tahiti, Honolulu — then to our Taos. And that is the way home —
coming back. Next spring we will come to Germany. I've got a
Heimweh for Europe: Sicily, England, Germany.

Auf Wiedersehen.

D. H. L.

I must hurry to catch the mail which leaves here tonight — leaves
Sydney tomorrow, for Europe. Write to me:

care of Robert Mountsier

417 West 1 18 Street
New York City

I shall get your letters in America. Frieda ist so gliicklich mit
ihrem neuen Haus — macht alles so schon.

D. H. L.

[118]

After the War

Thirroul, N.S.W.

Australia
9 June 1922

My dear Mother-in-Law:

We had two letters today — Anita's wedding letter , also the news
that Nusch wants to leave Max . Oh, God! Revolution and earthquake .
From your letters you seem to be a little angry . Are you angry that we
wandered farther away , we wandering Jews? I tell you again , the
world is round and brings the rolling stone home again . And I must
go on till I find something that gives me peace . Last year I found it
at Ebersteinburg . There I finished “ Aaron's Rod" and my “ Fantasia
of the Unconscious." And now “ Aaron " has appeared and this month
the “ Fantasia " will appear in New York . And I, I am in Australia ,
and suddenly I write again , a mad novel of Australia. That's how it
goes . I hope I can finish it by August. Then , mother-in-law, again
to the sea. We want to take the ship “ Tahiti that leaves Sydney
on the tenth of August , and arrives on the sixteenth in Wellington, New
Zealand; then to Raratonga and Papeete, capital of Tahiti, in the
middle of the Pacific Ocean, and then, September fourth, we arrive at
San Francisco, California. From San Francisco to Taos, New
Mexico. And I believe, in the spring, you will see us again in Baden -
Baden. Pve only just enough money to take us to Taos. And then
nothing. But it always comes.

It is nice here . You'd like this house very much : the large room with
open fireplace and beautiful windows with red curtains , and large
verandas , and the grass and the sea, always big and noisy at our feet.
We bathe at midday when the sun is very hot and the shores quite lonely,
quite, quite lonely . Only the waves. The village is new and crude.
The streets are not built, it is all sand and loam. It's interesting. The
people are all very kind and yet strange to me. Postman and newspaper

[119]

99

. “Not I, But the Wind

boy Corfu riding on horses and whistle on a policeman's whistle when
they have thrown in the letters or newspaper.

Meat is so cheap. Two good sheep's tongues ten cents , and a huge
piece of beef enough for twelve people forty cents. We also have lovely
fruit — apples , pears, passion-fruit, persimmons — and marvellous butter
and milk.

And heaven and earth so new as if no man had ever breathed in it,
no foot ever trodden on it. The great weight of the spirit that lies so
heavily on Europe doesn't exist here . You feel a little like a child that
has no real cares. It is interesting — a new experience .

It is your birthday in a little while. I send you a few cents, you can
still have teas with old women . Greet all. Poor Else! I'm writing
to her.

Leb wohl ,

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[ 120]

After the War

“Wyewurk”

Thirroul

South Coast, N.S.W.

Australia
13 June 1922

Dear Else:

I have been wanting to write to you. The Schweigermutter says that
Friedel is ill with jaundice. I am so sorry , and do hope it is better
by now.

I often think of you here , and wonder what you would think of this.
We're in a very nice place: have got a delightful bungalow here about
forty miles south of Sydney , right on the shore. We live mostly with
the sea — not much with the land — and not at all with the people . I
don't present any letters of introduction , we don't know a soul on this
side of the continent: which is almost a triumph in itself. For the first
time in my life I feel how lovely it is to know nobody in the whole
country: and nobody can come to the door , except the tradesmen who
bring the bread and meat and so on, and who are very unobtrusive.
One nice thing about these countries is that nobody asks questions. I
suppose there have been too many questionable people here in the past .
But it's nice not to have to start explaining oneself as one does in Italy.

The people here are awfully nice , casually: thank heaven I need go
no further. The township is just a scatter of bungalows , mostly of wood
with corrugated iron roofs , and with some quite good shops: “stores”
It lies back from the sea. Nobody wants to be too near the sea here:
only we are on the brink. About two miles inland there is a great long
hill like a wall, facing the sea and running all down the coast. This is
dark greyish with gum-trees , and it has little coal-mines worked into it.
The men are mostly coal-miners , so I feel quite at home. The township
itself— they never say village here — is all haphazard and new , the

1 121 ]

...* . 44 Mot I, But the Wind . . ”.. . .

streets unpaved, the church built of wood * That part is pleasant — the
newness . It feels so free . though it is midwinter , am/ /A* shortest

day next week, still every day is as sunny as our own summer , and the
sun is almost as hot as our June . But the nights are cold .

Australia is a weird , Azg country . It feels so empty and untrodden .
minute the night begins to go down , £/ze toimy, mzz Sydney ,

z^AzVA w huge , Aigt'or /0 /^/ unreal, as if it were only a daytime
imagination , and in the night it did not exist . That is a queer sensation:
as if life here really had never entered z/z: a* z/ z7 were just sprinkled
over , and the land lay untouched . They are terribly afraid of the
Japanese . Practically all Australians , azz</ especially Sydney, feel that
once there was a fall in England, so that the Powers could not interfere ,
Japan would at once walk in and occupy the place . They seriously
believe this: say it is even the most obvious thing for Japan to do, as a
business proposition. Of course Australia would never be able to defend
herself It is queer to find these bogies wherever one goes. But I suppose
they may materialize .

Labour is very strong ana very stupid . Everything except meat is
exorbitantly expensive, many things twice as much as in England.
And Australian apples are just as cheap in London as in Australia,
and sometimes cheaper. It is all very irritating.

This is the most democratic place I have ever been in. And the more
I see of democracy the more I dislike it. It just brings everything down
to the mere vulgar level of wages and prices, electric light and water
closets, and nothing else. You never knew anything so nothing, nichts,
nullus, niente, as the life here. They have good wages, they wear
smart boots, and the girls all have silk stockings; they fly around on
ponies and in buggies — sort of low one-horse traps — and in motor -
jprs. They are always vaguely and meaninglessly on the go. And it
all seems so empty, so nothing, it almost makes you sick. They are
healthy, and to my thinking almost imbecile. That's what the life in
a new country does to you: it makes you so material, so outward, that

[ 122 ]

. After the War .

/four real inner life and your inner self die outy and you clatter round
like so many mechanical animals. It is very like the Wells story —
the fantastic stories. I feel if I lived in Australia for ever I should never
open my mouth once to say one word that meant anything. Yet they
are very trustful and kind and quite competent in their jobs. There's
no need to lock your doors , nobody will come and steal. All the outside
life is so easy. But there it ends. There's nothing else. The best
society in the country are the shopkeepers — nobody is any better than
anybody elsey and it really is democratic. But it all feels so slovenly ,
slipshod , rootless, and empty , it is like a kind of dream. Yet the
weirdy unawakened country is wonderful and if one could have a dozen
people, perhaps , and a big piece of land of one's own — But there , one
can't.

There is this for it , that here one doesn't feel the depression and the
tension of Europe. Everything is happy-go-lucky, and one couldn't fret
about anything if one tried. One just doesn't care. And they are all
like that. Au fond they don't care a straw about anything: except just
their little egos. Nothing really matters. But they let the little things
matter sufficiently to keep the whole show going. In a way it's a relief—
a relief from the moral and mental and nervous tension of Europe .
But to say the least , it's surprising. I never felt such a foreigner to
any people in all my life as I do to these. An absolute foreigner , and
I haven't one single thing to say to them.

But I am busy doing a novel: with Australia for the setting: a
queer show. It goes fairly quickly , so I hope to have it done by
August . Then we shall sail via New Zealand and Tahiti for San
Francisco , and probably spend the winter in Taos} New Mexico.
That is what I think I want to do. Then the next spring come to
Europe again. I feel I shall wander for the rest of my days. But
I don't care.

I must say this new country has been a surprise to me. Flinders
Petrie . says new countries are no younger than their parent country.

[123]

99

. . . . . “Not I, But the Wind

But they are older , more empty , and more devoid of religion or anything
that makes for “quality” in life .

I have got a copy of “Aaron's Rod” for you, but am not sure whether
I may post it from here or not . Trade relations with Germany don't
start till August .

Write to me care of Robert Mountsier , 417 West 118 th Street ,
New York. I wish I had good news for you. Frieda sleeps after her
bath .

D. H. Lawrence.

If a girl called Ruth Wheelock sends you a little note I gave her to
introduce her to you , I think you'd like her. American , was in the
consulate in Palermo — we knew her there and in Rome — both like her .

D. H. L.

She's not got any money , unless she earns some or her father gives
her some.

[124]

. . . After the War .

We sailed from Sydney for San Francisco. It was a smallish
boat with a stout jolly captain. We passed Raratonga and
went on to Tahiti, always in perfect weather in the Pacific.
Nothing but flying fish, porpoises, sky, the great sea, and our
boat. Then Tahiti. It must have been so marvellous in the
past, those gentle, too gentle handsome natives, with their
huts, the perfection of the island in itself. But the joy of it was
gone. The charming native women, who offered me old beads
and flowers, made me sad in their clumsy Mother Hubbard
garments. I know how European diseases were wiping the
natives out, the contact with Europe fatal to them. In the
evening we saw a cinema in a huge kind of barn; there was a
native king, enormous; he was in a box near the stage with
several handsome wives. We had travelled with a cinema
crowd from Tahiti. Near our cabin two of the young stars had
their cabin. They seemed to sleep all day and looked white
and tired in the evening. Cases of empty champagne bottles
stood outside their cabin in the morning. One of them I had
seen flirt quite openly with a passenger but when we arrived
in San Francisco I saw her trip so innocently into the arms of
a young man who was waiting for her. I remember in San
Francisco how the moon at night made such a poor show
above all the lights of the town.

We went into a cafeteria and did not know how to behave;
how to take our plates and food.

[ 125]

America

We travelled from San Francisco to Taos in great expecta¬
tion. It was September and the journey through the inner
American desert very hot. We got out at Lamy to be met by
Mabel Dodge who had brought us here. And as we looked
out we saw Mabel standing there in a turquoise blue dress
with much of the silver-and-turquoise Indian jewellery and
by her side a handsome Indian in a blanket with a large silver
belt going across his chest. I looked at Mabel. “She has
eyes one can trust,55 I said to myself. And afterwards I always
kept to this: people are what they are, whatever they may
occasionally do.

When we came to Santa Fe all the hotels were full, so Mabel
asked Witter Bynner to take us in. He did: us, the trunks,
Sicilian cart and all.

The next morning we drove up through the vast wonderful
desert country, with its clear pure air, driving through the Rio
Grande canyon deep down by the river and then coming up
on to the Taos plateau. Coming out of the canyon to the mesa
is an unforgettable experience, with all the deep mountains
sitting mysteriously around in a ring, and so much sky.

Mabel had prepared us a house all to ourselves in her
“Mabel-town.55 The house stood on Indian land and belonged
to Tony. It was a charming adobe house, with Mexican
blankets and Indian paintings of Indian dances and animals,
clean and full of sun.

A new life for us — and we began it straightaway. Out from
the pueblo to the east of us, a few miles away, came the fed

[127]

. “Not I, But the Wind

of the Indians, so different from anything we had ever known.
We neither of us wanted to stunt about it, but we were very
happy. Tony went for two days with Lawrence to the Navajo
country. I spent the days with Mabel and her friend Alice
Corbin.

They asked me many questions, which I answered truthfully,
giving the show away completely as usual. Then Mabel, with
her great energy, took us all over the country: we saw the
pueblo, we bathed in a hot radium spring by the Rio Grande.
Mabel and Lawrence wanted to write a book together: about
Mabel, it was going to be. I did not want this. I had always
regarded Lawrence’s genius as given to me. I felt deeply
responsible for what he wrote. And there was a fight between
us, Mabel and myself: I think it was a fair fight. One day
Mabel came over and told me she didn’t think I was the right
woman for Lawrence and other things equally upsetting and
I was thoroughly roused and said: “Try it then yourself, living
with a genius, see what it is like and how easy it is, take him if
you can.”

And I was miserable thinking that Lawrence had given her
a right to talk like this to me. When Lawrence came in, he saw
that I was unhappy, and somebody had told him that Mabel’s
son John Evans had said: “My mother is tired of those Law¬
rences who sponge on her.” This may have been pure malice,
but Lawrence was in a fury too; not for nothing was his beard
red, and he said: “I will pay the rent of the house and I’ll
leave as soon as I can.”

And then he would draw me in a flood of tenderness and
love and we would be washed clean of all our apartness and
be together again. And Lawrence would rave against Mabel
as only he could rave. When I wanted to stick up for her I
would get it: “All women are alike, bossy, without any decency;

[128]

. America .

it’s your business to see that other women don’t come too close
to me.”

That’s what he said. It was all very well, but I didn’t know
how to do it.

We had learned to ride: a long thin Don Quixote of a Mexican
had taught us how in a few rides across the open desert. I was
terribly happy, feeling the live horse under me. Later on,
Azul, my horse, would go like the wind with me and he seemed
always aware of me when I was a bit scared.

So we left Mabel’s ambient and went to live at the Del
Monte Ranch, under the mountains. We had a log house, and
the Hawks lived at the big house and in the lower log cabin
lived two Danish painters who had come to stay with us; they
had come from New York in the most trying old Lizzie that
ever went along the road.

She coughed and trembled at the tiniest hill, she stuck and
had to be shoved: she was a trial.

It was a real mountain winter. So sharp, knifey cold at
night; snow and ice, and the Danes and Lawrence had to
chop lots of wood.

We rode into the Lobo Canyon over the logs under the
trees and one had to look out for one’s head and knees when
the horses tore along under the trees. Lawrence would say
later on: “If you were only as nice with me as you are with
Azul.”

The friendship and fight with Mabel went on, off and on.
She was so admirable in her terrific energy, in her resources
and intelligence, but we couldn’t get on, somehow.

I remember riding dong in the car, when Lawrence said to
her: “Frieda is the freest human being I know.” And I
said to him, afterwards: “You needn’t say nice things about
me, just to make other people mad.”

[ I29 ]

. “Not J, But the Wind . . .” .

Tony would sing his Indian songs when driving. I had told
him: “In our country, Tony, one crow means bad luck and
two good luck.” So he would watch for crows and say: “Two
crows, Frieda.”

In the spring we went to Mexico with Witter Bynner and
Spud Johnson. After the hard winter, I clamoured for a first-
rate hotel in Mexico City. But it wasn’t a success, the first-rate
hotel, after all, it seemed dull and a bit unclean; the ladies
were so very painted and the men not attractive.

The journey across the lonely desert had been strange. The
stations were only a few miserable houses and a big water tank
and fine dust blew in at the window of the car, filling one’s
eyes and ears and nose, all one’s pores with very fine sand.

Mexico City seemed like a would-be smart and grand lady
to me, but she hadn’t quite brought it off. The shabby parts
were the most interesting. The Volador Market and all the
fascinating baskets and ropes and saddles and belts, pots and
dishes and leather-jackets.

One day we were in the cathedral plaza of Mexico City,
Bynner and Spud and I, when on the top of the church we saw
a red flag being hoisted. A crowd collected, soldiers appeared.
Bynner and Spud had dashed into the dark hole of the door
of the church tower. It was crowding with people. I stayed in
the plaza, watching the tower on which were Bynner and
Spud, fearing for their fate. My relief when they appeared
after an hour was great.

In the Museum we saw among the Aztec relics coiled snakes
and other terrifying stone carvings, Maximilian’s state carriage.
That took me back to my childhood. One of the impressive
figures of my childhood had been a Graf Geldern, long, lean,

c 130]

. America .

sad, and loosely built like a Mexican, in the uniform of a colonel
of the “Totenkopfhusaren.” He had been to Mexico with
Maximilian. How he afterwards took Prussian service I don’t
know. When they shot Maximilian, they played “La Paloma.”
He had asked for it.

Lawrence went to Guadalajara and found a house with a
patio on the Lake of Chapala. There Lawrence began to write
his “Plumed Serpent.” He sat by the lake under a pepper tree
writing it. The lake was curious with its white water. My
enthusiasm for bathing in it faded considerably when one
morning a huge snake rose yards high, it seemed to me, only a
few feet away. At the end of the patio we had the family that
Lawrence describes in the “Plumed Serpent,” and all the life of
Chapala. I tried my one attempt at civilizing those Mexican
children, but when they asked me one day: “Do you have lice
too, Nina,” I had enough and gave up in a rage. At night I
was frightened of bandits and we had one of the sons of the
cook sleeping outside our bedroom door with a loaded revolver,
but he snored so fiercely that I wasn’t sure whether the fear
of bandits wasn’t preferable. We quite sank into the patio
life. Bynner and Spud came every afternoon, and I remember
Bynner saying to me one day, while he was mixing a cocktail:
“If you and Lawrence quarrel, why don’t you hit first?” I
took the advice and the next time Lawrence was cross, I rose
to the occasion and got out of my Mexican indifference and
flew at him.

All that time in Mexico seems to me, now, as if I had dreamt
it, dreamt it intensely.

We went across the pale Lake of Chapala to a native
village where they made serapes; they dyed the Wool and
wove them on simple looms. Lawrence made some designs
and had them woven, as in the “Plumed Serpent.”

[131 ]

K

99

. “Not /, But the Wind

Lawrence could only write in places where one’s imagination
could have space and free play, where the door was not closed
to the future, where one’s vision could people it with new souls
to be bom, who would live a new life.

I remember the Pyramids at Teotihuacan, that we saw with
Spud and Bynner, I hanging around behind. It was getting
dusky and suddenly I came on a huge stone snake, coiling
green with great turquoise eyes, round the foot of a temple.
I ran after the others for all I was worth.

I got a glimpse of old Mexico then, the old sacrifices, hearts
still quivering held up to the sun, for the sun to drink the
blood: there it had all happened, on the pyramid of the Sun.

And that awful goddess, who, instead of a Raphael bambino,
brings forth an obsidian knife. Fear of these people who don’t
mind killing and don’t mind dying. And I had seen a huge
black Christ, in a church, with a black beard and long woman’s
hair and he wore little white, frilly knickers. Death and
sacrifice and cruel gods seemed to reign in Mexico under its
sunshine and splendour of flowers and lots of birds and fruit
and white volcano peaks.

We went into a huge old Noah’s Ark of a boat, called
“Esmeralda,” on the Lake of Chapala, with two other friends
and Spud. Three Mexicans looked after the boat. They had
guitars and sang their melancholy or fierce songs at the end of
the boat. In the evening we slowly drifted along the large
lake, that was more like a white sea, and, one day, we had no
more to eat. So we landed on the island of the scorpions, still
crowned by a Mexican empty prison, and only fit for scorpions.
There Lawrence bought a live goat, but when we had seen our
Mexican boatmen practically tearing the poor beast to pieces,
our appetites vanished and we did not want to eat any more.

Lawrence’s visions which he wrote in the “Plumed Serpent”

c 132]

. America .

seem so interwoven with everyday life. The everyday and the
vision running on together day by day. That autumn we
returned to America and spent some time in New Jersey.
Lawrence remained in America and went again to Mexico.
I went to Europe.

So I went to England alone and had a little flat in Hamp¬
stead to see something of my children. It was winter and I
wasn’t a bit happy alone there and Lawrence was always
cross when I had this longing for the children upon me; but
there it was, though now I know he was right: they didn’t
want me any more, they were living their own lives. I felt lost
without him. Finally he came and wrote this cross and unjust
letter to my mother:

[ I33 3

“Not I, But the Wind

Hotel Garcia
Guadalajara
Jalisco, Mexico
io November, 1923

My dear Mother-in-Law:

I had the two letters from Frieda at Baden , with the billet-doux
from you. Fes, mother-in-law , I believe one has to be seventy before
one is full of courage. The young are always half-hearted. Frieda
also makes a long , sad nose and says she is writing to the moon —
Guadalajara is no moon-town, and I am completely on the earth , with
solid feet.

But I am coming back, am only waiting for a ship. I shall be in
England in December. And in the spring , when the primroses are out,
I shall be in Baden . Time goes by faster and faster . Frieda sent me
Hartmann von Richthofen's letter. It was nice . But the women have
more courage these days than the men — also a letter from Nusch , a
little sad but lively. I hope to see her also in the spring. One must
spit on one's hands and take firm hold. Don't you think so?

I was at the Barranca, a big, big ravine, and bathed in the hot
swings — came home and found the whole of Germany in my room,
f O like it here. I don't know how , but it gives me strength, this black
country. It is full of man's strength, perhaps not woman's strength ,
but it is good, like the old German beer-for-the-heroes, for me. Oh9
mother-in-law, you are nice and old, and understand , as the first maiden
understood, that a man must be more than nice and good , and that
heroes are worth more than saints. Frieda doesn't understand that a
man must be a hero these days and not only a husband: husband also
but more. I must go up and down through the world , I must balance
Germany against Mexico and Mexico against Germany. I do not come
for peace. The devil, the holy devil, has peace round his neck) I know it

[134]

. America .

welly the courageous old one understands me better than the young one,
or at least something in me she understands better . Frieda must always
think and write and say and ponder how she loves me. It is stupid .
I am no Jesus that lies on his mother's lap/ 1 go my way through the
world,') and if Frieda finds it such hard work to love me, then, dear
God, let her love rest, give it holidays. {Oh, mother-in-law, you under¬
stand, as my mother finally understood , that a man doesn't want,
doesn't ask for love from his wife, but for strength, strength, strength .
To fight , to fight, to fight, and to fight again. And one needs courage
and strength and weapons. And the stupid woman keeps on saying
love, love , love, and writes of love . To the devil with love! Give
me strength, battle-strength, weapon-strength, fighting-strength, give
me this, you woman!

England is so quiet: writes Frieda. Shame on you that you ask for
peace today. ( I don't want peace. I go around the world fighting. Pfui!
Pfui! In the grave I find my peace. First let me fight and win through.
Yes, yes, mother-in-law, make me an oak-wreath and bring the town
music under the window, when the half-hero returns ^

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[135]

. "Not /, But the Wind . . ” .

But I think he was right; I should have gone to meet him in
Mexico, he should not have come to Europe; these are the
mistakes we make, sometimes irreparable.

Finally he came and I was glad. Just before Christmas he
came and we had some parties and saw some friends, but we
wanted to go back to America in the spring and live at the
ranch that Mabel Luhan had given me. She had taken me to
the little ranch near Taos and I said: “This is the loveliest
place I have ever seen.” And she told me: “I give it you.”
But Lawrence said: “We can’t accept such a present from
anybody.” I had a letter from my sister that very morning
telling me she had sent the manuscript of “Sons and Lovers,”
so I told Lawrence: “I will give Mabel the MS. for the ranch.”
So I did.

Murry was coming to America too. First we went to Paris,
where we stayed as in our own home at the Hotel de Versailles.

Lawrence wanted me to have some new clothes. Mabel
Harrison, who had a large studio opposite the hotel, told us of
a good tailor nearby. Lawrence went with me. The stout little
tailor draped himself with the cape we bought to show me
how to wear it. “Voyez-vous, la ligne, Madame.” He made
me some other clothes and Lawrence remarked with wonder:
“How is it possible that a man can throw all his enthusiasm
into clothes for women?”

We went to Strassburg and Baden-Baden, a strange journey
for me, going through French territory that had been German
just a few years ago.

In the spring we went to America again and Dorothy Brett
came with us. We only stayed a few days in New York and
went on to Taos. We stayed with Mabel Luhan but, somehow,
we didn’t get on. I was longing to go to the ranch and live
there. Lawrence was a bit afraid to tackle the forlorn little

[136]

. America .

ranch. We had some ten or a dozen Indians to build up the
tumble-down houses and corrals and everything. Then he
loved it. We had to mend the irrigation ditch and we were im¬
pressed by the way Mr. Murry dragged huge pipes through the
woods, just over no road, to the mouth of the Gallina Canyon
of which we had the water rights. And I cooked huge meals
for everybody. We all worked so hard. Brett, as everybody
called her, straight from her studio life, was amazing for the
hard work she would do. One day we cleaned our spring
and carried huge stones until we nearly dropped. The spring
is in a hollow, and I loved watching the horses play when they
came to drink there, shoving each other’s noses away from the
water level and then tearing up the bank. We did it all our¬
selves for very little money for we didn’t have much. We got a
cow and had four horses: Azul, Aaron, and two others; and
then he got chickens, all white ones, Leghorns. The beautiful
cockerel was called Moses and Susan was the cow’s name.

Lawrence got up at five o’clock each morning. With the
opera glasses my mother had given him, he looked for Susan,
who was an independent creature and loved to hide in the
woods. There he would stand, when at last he had found her,
and shake his forefinger at her — to my delight — and scold her,
the black cow.

I made our own butter in a little glass churn and the chickens
flourished on the buttermilk, and so did we in this healthy
life. We made our own bread in the Indian oven outside,
black bread and white and cakes, and Lawrence was terribly
fussy about the bread, which had to be perfect. He made cup¬
boards and chairs and painted doors and windows. He wrote
and irrigated and it seems amazing that one single man got so
much done. We rode and people stayed with us, and he was
always there for everybody as if he did nothing at all. He

1 137]

. “Not I ; But the Wind . . .” .

helped Brett with her pictures and me with my poor attempts.

It was a wonderful summer; there were wild strawberries,
that year, and back in the canyon raspberries as big as garden
ones, but I was afraid to get them because I had heard that
bears love raspberries. Bears won’t do you any harm except
when they have young. There were bears in the canyon —
that seemed indeed the end of the world! The Brett had a
tiny shanty in which she lived. She adored Lawrence and
slaved for him.

In the autumn we went again to Mexico City. It was fun
and we saw several people. In Mexico you could still feel a
little lordly and an individual; Mexico has not yet been made
“safe for democracy.”

An amusing thing happened: Lawrence had become a
member of the PEN Club and they gave an evening in his
honour. It was a men’s affair and he put on his black clothes
and set off in the evening, and I, knowing how unused he was
to public functions and how he really shrank from being a
public figure, wondered in the hotel room how the evening
would go off. Soon after ten o’clock he appeared.

“How was it?”

“Well, they read to me bits of ‘The Plumed Serpent’ in
Spanish and I had to sit and listen and then they made a
speech and I had to answer.”

“What did you say?”

“I said: here we are together, some of us English, some
Mexicans and Americans, writers and painters and business
men and so on, but before all and above all we are men together
tonight. That was about what I said. But a young Mexican
jumped up: ‘It’s all very well for an Englishman to say I am
a man first and foremost, but a Mexican cannot say so, he
must be a Mexican above everything.’ ”

[138]

. America .

So we laughed, the only speech that Lawrence ever made
falling so completely flat. They had missed the whole point,
as so often.

Just as it was said of him that he wasn’t patriotic; he who
seemed to me England itself, a flower sprung out of its most
delicate, courageous tradition, not the little bourgeois England
but the old England of Palmerston, whom he admired, when
men were still men and not mere social beings.

One day William Somerset Maugham was expected in
Mexico City; so Lawrence wrote to him if they could meet.
But Maugham’s secretary answered for him, saying: “I hear
we are going out to a friend’s to lunch together who lives
rather far out; let’s share a taxi.”

Lawrence was angry that Maugham had answered through
his secretary and wrote back: ‘‘No, I won’t share a car.”

Brett came with us and she had a story from her sister, the
Ranee of Sarawak, where Maugham had stayed and he and
his secretary had nearly got drowned, shooting some rapids,
I think. So there had been feeling there. And our hostess had
a grudge against the secretary. Maugham sat next to me and I
asked how he liked it here. He answered crossly: “Do you
want me to admire men in big hats?”

I said: “I don’t care what you admire.” And then the lunch
was drowned in acidity all around. But after lunch I felt sorry
for Maugham: he seemed to me an unhappy and acid man,
who got no fun out of living. He seemed to me to have fallen
between two stools as so many writers do. He wanted to have
his cake and eat it. He could not accept the narrow social
world and yet he didn’t believe in a wider human oije. Com¬
mentators and critics of life and nothing more.

When I met other writers, then I knew without knowing
how different altogether Lawrence was. They may have

[ *39 3

. “Not /, But the Wind . . .

been good writers, but Lawrence was a genius.

The inevitability of what he elementally was and had to say
at any price, his knowledge and vision, came to him from
deeper secret sources than it is given to others to draw from.
When I read iEschylus and Sophocles, then I know Lawrence
is great, he is like these — greatest in his work, where human
passions heave and sink and mingle and clash. The back¬
ground of death is always there and the span of life is felt as
fierce action. Life is life only when death is part of it. Not like
the Christian conception that shuts death away from life and
says death comes after: death is always there. I think the great
gain of the war is a new reincorporation of death into our lives.

Then we went down to Oaxaca. We had again a house with
a patio. There Lawrence wrote “Mornings in Mexico,” with
the parrots and Corasmin, the white dog, and the mozo. He
rewrote and finished the “Plumed Serpent” there. There was
malaria in Oaxaca, it had come with the soldiers, and the
climate didn’t suit him.

I went to the market with the mozo and one day he showed
me in the square, in one of the bookshops, an undeniable
caricature of Lawrence, and he watched my face to see how I
would take it. I was thrilled! To find in this wild place, with its
Zapotec and undiluted Mexican tribes, anything so civilized
as a caricature of Lawrence was fun. I loved the market and
it was only distressing to see the boy with his basket so utterly
miserable at my paying without bargaining: it was real pain
to him. But the lovely flowers and everything seemed so
cheap.

Meanwhile Lawrence wrote at home and got run down.
The Brett came every day and I thought she was becoming too
much part of our lives and I resented it. So I told Lawrence:
“I want the Brett to go away,” and he raved at me, said I was a

1 140]

. America .

jealous fool. But I insisted and so Brett went up to Mexico
City. Then Lawrence finished “The Plumed Serpent,” already
very ill, and later on he told me he wished he had finished it
differently. Then he was very ill. I had a local native doctor
who was scared at having anything to do with a foreigner and
he didn’t come. Lawrence was very ill, much more ill than I
knew, fortunately. I can never say enough of the handful of
English and Americans there: how good they were to us.
Helping in every way. I thought these mine-owners and
engineers led plucky and terrible lives. Always fever, typhoid,
malaria, danger from bandits, never feeling a bit safe with
their lives. And so I was amazed at the “Selbstverstandlich-
keit” with which they helped us. It was so much more than
Christian, just natural: a fellow-Englishman in distress: let’s
help him. Lawrence himself thought he would die.

“You’ll bury me in this cemetery here,” he would say, grimly.

“No, no,” I laughed, “it’s such an ugly cemetery, don’t you
think of it.”

And that night he said to me: “But if I die, nothing has
mattered but you, nothing at all.” I was almost scared to hear
him say it, that, with all his genius, I should have mattered so
much. It seemed incredible.

I got him better by putting hot sandbags on him, that
seemed to comfort his tortured inside.

One day we had met a missionary and his wife, who lived
right in the hills with the most uncivilized tribe of Indians.
He didn’t look like a missionary but like a soldier. He told me
he had been an airman, and there far away in Oaxaca he
told me how he was there when Manfred Richthofen was
brought down behind the trenches and in the evening at mess
one of the officers rose and said: “Let’s drink to our noble and
generous enemy.”

t hi ]

:iYi ............ .“.ATo/ J, But the Wind-, ...... . ...... .

For me to be told of this noble gesture made in that awful
war was a great thing.

Then I remember the wife appeared with a very good bowl
of soup when Lawrence was at his worst, and then prayed for
him by his bedside in that big bare room. I was half afraid
and wondered how Lawrence would feel. But he took it
gently and I was half laughing, half crying over the soup and
the prayer.

While he was so ill an earthquake happened into the bargain,
a thunderstorm first, and the air made you gasp. I felt ill and
feverish and Lawrence so ill in the next room — dogs howled
and asses and horses and cats were scared in the night — and
to my horror I saw the beams of my roof move in and out of
their sheaves.

“Let’s get under the bed if the roof falls!” I cried.

At last, slowly, slowly, he got a little better. I packed up to
go to Mexico City. This was a crucifixion of a journey for me.
We travelled through the tropics. Lawrence in the heat so
weak and ill and then the night we stayed half-way to Mexico
City in a hotel. There, after the great strain of his illness,
something broke in me. “He will never be quite well again, he
is ill, he is doomed. All my love, all my strength, will never
make him whole again.” I cried like a maniac the whole
night. And he disliked me for it. But we arrived in Mexico
City. I had Dr. Uhlfelder come and see him. One morning I
had gone out and when I came back the analyst doctor was
there and said, rather brutally, when I came into Lawrence’s
room: “Mr. Lawrence has tuberculosis.” And Lawrence
looked at me with such unforgettable eyes.

“What will she say and feel?” And I said: “Now we
know, we can tackle it. That’s nothing. Lots of people have
that.” And he got slowly better and could go to lunch with

[ 142]

LAWRENCE IN MEXICO

. . America . .

friends. But they, the doctors, told me:

“Take him to the ranch; it’s his only chance. He has T.B.
in the third degree. A year or two at the most.”

With this bitter knowledge in my heart I had to be cheerful
and strong. Then we travelled back to the ranch and were
tortured by immigration officials, who made all the difficulties
in the ugliest fashion to prevent us from entering the States.
If the American Embassy in Mexico hadn’t helped we would
not have been able to go to the ranch that was going to do
Lawrence so much good.

Slowly at the ranch he got better. The high clear air, short
sunbaths, our watching and care, and the spring brought life
back into him. As he got better he began writing his play
“David,” lying outside his little room on the porch in the sun.

I think in that play he worked off his struggle for life. Old
Saul and the young David — old Samuel’s prayer is peculiarly
moving in its hopeless love for Saul — so many different motifs,
giant motifs, in that play.

Mabel took us to a cave along the road near Arroyo Seco
and he used it for his story “The Woman Who Rode Away.”

Brett was always with us. I liked her in many ways; she was
so much her own self.

I said to her: “Brett, I’ll give you half a crown if you con¬
tradict Lawrence,” but she never did. Her blind adoration for
him, her hero-worship for him was touching, but naturally it
was balanced by a preconceived critical attitude towards me.
He was perfect and I always wrong, in her eyes.

When the Brett came with us Lawrence said to me: “You
know, it will be good for us to have the Brett with us, she
will stand between us and people and the world.” I did not
really want her with us, and had a suspicion that she might not
want to stand between us and the world, but between him and

[ 143]

>5

. “Not /, But the Wind

me. But no, I thought, I won’t be so narrow-gutted, one of
Lawrence’s words, I will try.

So I looked after Brett and was grateful for her actual help.
She did her share of the work. I yelled down her ear-trumpet,
her Toby, when people were there, that she should not feel
out of it. But as time went on she seemed always to be there,
my privacy that I cherished so much was gone. Like the eye of
the Lord, she was; when I washed, when I lay under a bush
with a book, her eyes seemed to be there, only I hope the eye of
the Lord looks on me more kindly. Then I detested her, poor
Brett, when she seemed deaf and dumb and blind to everything
quick and alive. Her adoration for Lawrence seemed a silly
old habit. “Brett,” I said, “I detest your adoration for Law¬
rence, only one thing I would detest more, and that is if you
adored me.”

When I finally told Lawrence in Oaxaca: “I don’t want
Brett such a part of our life, I just don’t want her,” he was cross
at first, but then greatly relieved.

How thrilling it was to feel the inrush of new vitality in him;
it was like a living miracle. A wonder before one’s eyes. How
grateful he was inside him! “I can do things again. I can live
and do as I like, no longer held down by the devouring illness.”
How he loved every minute of life at the ranch. The morning,
the squirrels, every flower that came in its turn, the big trees,
chopping the wood, the chickens, making bread, all our hard
work, and the people and all assumed the radiance of new life.
<JHe worked hard as a relaxation and wrote for hard work A

1 144]

America

Palace Hotel

San Francisco, U.S.A.

5 September 1922

Dear Mother-in-Law:

We arrived yesterday, the journey good all the way . Now we sit in
the Palace Hotel , the first hotel of San Francisco . It was first a hut with a
corrugated iron roof where the ox-wagons unhitched. Now a big
building , with post and shops in it, like a small town in itself: is
expensive, but for a day or two it doesn't matter. We were twenty five
days at sea and are still landsick — the floor ought to go up and down, the
room ought to tremble from the engines , the water ought to swish around
but doesn’t, so one is landsick. The solid ground almost hurts . We have
many ship's friends here, are still a jolly company .

I think we shall go to Taos Tuesday or Friday: two days by train, a
thousand miles by car. We have such nice letters and telegrams from
Mabel Dodge and Mountsier . Mabel says: “ From San Francisco you
are my guests, so I send you the railway tickets ” — so American !
Everybody is very nice . All is comfortable, comfortable, comfortable — I
really hate this mechanical comfort .

I send you thirty dollars — I have no English cheques — till I arrive in
Taos . I will send you English money , with the rise of the valuta . Does
Else need any money? I don’t know how much Vve got, but our life in
Taos will cost little — rent free and wood free . Keep well , mother-in-
law. I wait for news from you.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[ H5]

14 Not /, But the Wind

Taos

New Mexico

U.S.A.

27 September 1922
My dear Else:

Well, here we are in the Land of the Free and the Home of the
Brave . But both freedom and bravery need defining . The Eros book
came , and I shall read it as soon as we get breathing space . Even
though we are in the desert , in the sleepy land of the Mexican , we gasp on
the breath of hurry .

We have got a very charming adobe house on the edge of the Indian
Reservation — very smartly furnished with Indian village-made furniture
and Mexican and Navajo rugs , and old European pottery.

Behind runs a brook — in front the desert , a level little plain all grey ,
white-grey sage brushy in yellow flower — and from this plain rise the
first Rocky MountainSy heavy and solid. We are seven thousand feet
above the sea — in a light , clear air.

The sun by day is hot , night is chilly. At the foot of the sacred Taos
Mountainy three miles offy the Indians have their puebby like a pile of
earth-coloured cube-boxes in a heap ; two piles rather , one on one side of
the streamy one on the other. The stream waters the little valley , and they
grow\ corn and maizey by irrigation . This pueblo owns four square
miles of land. They are nearer the Aztec type of Indian — not like
Apaches whom I motored last week to see— far over these high9 sage -
brush deserts and through canyons.

These Indians are soft-spokeny pleasant enough — the young ones
come to dance to the drum — very funny and strange. They are Catholics
but still keep the old religion , making the weather and shaping the year:
all very secret and important to them. They are naturally secretive , and
have their backs set against our form of civilization . Yet it rises against

[146]

. America .

them. In the pueblo they have mowing machines and threshing machines ,
and American schools, and the young men no longer care so much for the
sacred dances .

And after all , if we have to go ahead \ we must ourselves go ahead.
We can go back and pick up some threads — but these Indians
are up against a dead wall , even more than we are: but a different
wall.

Mabel Sterne is very nice to us — though I hate living on somebody
else's property and accepting their kindnesses. She very much wants me to
write about here. I don't know if I ever shall. Because though it is so
open , so big, free, empty, and even aboriginal — still it has a sort of
shutting-out quality, obstinate.

Everything in America goes by will. A great negative will seems to be
turned against all spontaneous life — there seems to be no feeling at all —
no genuine bowels of compassion and sympathy: all this gripped , iron,
benevolent will, which in the end is diabolic. How can one write
about it, save analytically?

Frieda, like you , always secretly hankered after America and its
freedom: It's very freedom not to feel. But now she is just beginning to
taste the iron ugliness of what it means, to live by will against the
spontaneous inner life, superimposing the individual, egoistic will over
the real genuine sacred life . Of course I know you will jeer when I say
there is any such thing as sacred spontaneous life, with its pride and its
sacred power. I know you too believe in the screwed-up human will
dominating life. But I don't. And that's why I think America is
neither free nor brave, but a land of tight, iron-clanking little wills,
everybody trying to put it over everybody else, and a land of men absolutely
devoid of the real courage of trust, trust in life's sacred spontaneity. They
can't trust life until they can control it. So much for them — cowards!
You can have the Land of the Free — as much as I know of It. In the
spring I want to come back to Europe.

I fend you ten pounds to spend for the children — since you suffer from

1 147 ] *•

. "Not I, But the Wind . . ” .

the exchange. I hope in this little trifle you can profit by it. F. sends her
love.

D. H. Lawrence.

P.S. If you want winter clothing, or underclothing, for the children or
yourself or Alfred, write to my sister, Mrs. L. A. Clarke, Grosvenor Rd.,
Ripley near Derby — tell her just what you want, and she will send it. I
shall pay her — I have told her you will write — so don't hesitate.

[148]

America

Del Monte Ranch
Questa, New Mexico
5 December 1922

My dear Mother-in- Law:

You see , we have flown again, but not far — only twenty-five kilometres ,
and here we are in an old log-house with five rooms , very primitive , on this
big ranch. Behind, the Rocky Mountains, pines and snow-peaks; around
us the hills — pine trees, cedars, greasewood, and a small grey bush of the
desert. Below, the desert, great and flat like a shadowy lake, very wide.
And in the distance more mountains, with small patches of snow — and the
sunsets! Now you see the picture.

The Hawk family live five minutes from here, then no houses for four
kilometres. Behind, no house for three hundred kilometres or more. Few
people , an empty , very beautiful country.

We have hewn down a great balsam pine and cut it to pieces — like a
quarry — the gold wood.

We have for companions two young Danes, painters: they will go into a
little three-room cabin nearby. Our nearest neighbour, Hawk , is a
young man , thirty years old, has a hundred and fifty half wild animals, a
young wife, is nice, not rich.

You have asked about Mabel Dodge: American, rich, only child, from
Buffalo on Lake Erie, bankers, forty-two years old, has had three
husbands — one Evans {dead), one Dodge {divorced), and one Maurice
Sterne {a Jew, Russian, painter, young, also divorced) . Now she has an
Indian , Tony , a stout chap. She has lived much in Europe — Paris, Nice,
Florence — is a little famous in New York and little loved, very intelligent
as a woman, another “ culture-carrier ,” likes to play the patroness, hates
the white world and loves the Indian out of hate, is very “generous,”
wants to be “good” and is very wicked, has a terrible will- to-power, you
know — she wants to be a witch and at the same time a Mary of Bethany

[ 149]

V, "Wot' /, But the Wind . . ” . . .

at Jesus$s feet— a big , white crow , a cooing raven of ill-omen , a little
buffalo.

The people in America all want power , but a small , personal base
power: bullying . 77i^ ar* a// bullies .

Listen , Germany , America is the greatest bully the world has ever
seen . Power is proud . Zfa/ bullying is democratic and base .

Bastay we are still “friends” with Mabel. But do not take this snake
to our bosom. You know , //r^ people have only money , nothing else but
money , and because all the world wants money , all the money , America
has become strong , proud and over-powerful.

If one would only say: “America, your money is sh ... , £0 anrf
sh . . . more” — then America would be a nothing .

(Translated from the German)

[150]

LAWRENCE IN MEXICO

•it

America . . . . ,

Hotel Monte Carlo
Uruguay, Mexico
27 April 1923

My dear Mother-in-Law:

We are' still here , still making excursions . We can’t make up our
minds to go away . Tomorrow I go to Guadalajara and the Chapala
Lake . There you have the Pacific breeze again , straight from the Pacific.
One doesn’t want to come back to Europe . All is stupid , evilly stupid and
no end to it . You must be terribly tired of this German tragedy — all
without meaning , without direction , idea, or spirit . Only money-greed
and impudence . Ow* carc’J cfo anything , nothing at ally except get bored
and wicked. Here in Mexico there’s also Bolshevism and Fascism and
revolutions and all the rest of it. But I don’t care. I don’t listen. And
the Indians remain outside. Revolutions come and revolutions go but they
remain the same. They haven’t the machinery of our consciousness , they
are like black water , over which go our dirty motorboats , with stink and
noise — the water gets a little dirty but does not really change.

I send you ten pounds and five for Else. I hope it arrives soon. A
Hamburg- America boat goes every month from Vera Cruz to Hamburg.
It must be lovely spring in Germany. If only men were not so stupid and
evil , I would so love to be in Ebersteinburg when the chestnuts are in
bloom. Have you seen “ The Captain’s Doll”? It ought to amuse you.

A thousand greetings.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[ 151 1

'Not I, But the Wind .

Zaragoza 4
Chapala, Jalisco
Mexico

31 May, Corpus Christi Day
My dear Mother-in-Law:

You will think we are never coming back to Europe . But it isn't so.

But I always had the idea of writing a novel here in America . In
the U.S. I could do nothing . But I think here it will go well. I
have already written ten chapters and if the Lord helps me I shall
have finished the first full sketch by the end of June. And then we will
come home at once.

I must go by way of New York because of business and because it is
shorter and cheaper. But in July New York is very hot and the
nastiest heat , they say. Still , we won't stay more than a fortnight, from
there to England and from England to Germany — very likely in Septem¬
ber: my birthday month that I like so much.

Today is Corpus Christi and they have a procession. But there are no
lovely birches as in Ebersteinburg two years ago. They only carry little
palms into the churches , and palms aren't beautiful like our trees , and
this eternal sun is not as joyous as our sun. It is always shining and is a
little mechanical.

But Mexico is very interesting : a foreign people. They are mostly
pure Indians , dark like the people in Ceylon but much stronger. The
men have the strongest backbones in the world , I believe. They are
half civilized , half wild. If they only had a new faith they might
be a new , young , beautiful people . But as Christians they don't get
any further , are melancholy inside , live without hope , are suddenly
wicked , and don't like to work. But they are also good , can be gentle
and honest , are very quiet , and are not at all greedy for money , and
to me that is marvellous , they care so little for possessions , here in

[152]

. America .

America where the whites care for nothing else . But not the peon .
He has not this fever to possess that is a real “ Weltschmer£ 9 with
us.

And now you know where we are and how it is with us. Pll send you a
beautiful serape — blanket— for your birthday.

Auf Wiedersehen.

D. H. Lawrence.

(Translated from the German)

[*53]

* Not /, But the Wind .

Care of Seltzer
5 West 50TH Street
New York City
7 August 1923

My dear Mother -in-Law:

We are still here in America — I find my soul doesn't want to come to
Europe , it is like Balaam's ass and can't come any further. I am not
coming , but Frieda is. Very likely she will come by the S.S. “ Orbitaf
on the eighteenth, from New York , for Southampton , England. She will
be in London on the twenty-fifth , stays there a fortnight , then to Baden . I
remain on this side: go to California , Los Angeles , where we have
friends , and if it is nice there , Frieda can come there in October. I don't
know why I can't go to England. Such a deadness comes over me , if I
only think of it , that I think it is better if I stay here , till myfeeliag has
changed.

I don't like New York — a big , without background ,

without a voice. But here in the country it is green and still. But I like
Mexico better. With my heart I'd like to come — also with my feet and
eyes. But my soul can t. Farewell. Later on3 the ass will be able to
come.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[ 154]

America

no Heath Street
Hampstead, London, N.W.3
14 December 1923

My dear Mother-in- Law:

Here I am back again . Frieda is nice but England is ugly . I am like a
wild beast in a cage — it is so dark and closed-in here and you carCt
breathe freely. But the people are friendly. Frieda has a nice apartment
but I go about like an imprisoned coyote — card t rest.

I think we'll go to Paris at the end of the month and then Baden .

Do you hear me howl?

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[ 155]

'Not I, But the Wind

Paris

Hotel de Versailles

60 Boulevard Montparnasse

Saturday

Dearest Miitchen :

We are sitting in bed , have had our coffee , the clock says 8:30, and we
see the people and the carriages pass on the boulevard outside in the
morning sun . The old men and women shake their carpets on their
balconies in the tall house opposite , cleaning hard. Paris is still Paris .

We went to Versailles yesterday. It is stupid , so very big and flat,
much too big for the landscape. No, such hugeness is merely blown up
frog , that wants to make himself larger than nature and naturally he goes
pop! Le Roi Soleil was like that — a very artificial light. Frieda was
terribly disappointed in Le Petit Trianon of Marie Antoinette — a doll's
palace and a doll's Swiss village from the stage. Poor Marie Antoinette ,
she wanted to be so simple and become a peasant , with her toy Swiss
village and her nice , a little ordinary , Austrian , blond face. Finally she
became too simple , without a head.

On the great canal a few people skated , a very few people , little and
cold and without fun , between those well-combed trees that stand there
like hair with an elegant parting. And these are the great. Man is
stupid. Naturally the frog goes pop!

Frieda has bought two hats and is proud of them.

Tomorrow we go to Chartres to see the cathedral. And that is our last
outing. Tuesday we go to London.

Now , mother-in-law, you know all we are doing and can travel along
with us. Such is life . We can go together in spite of separation and you
can travel , travel in spite of old age.

Salutations, Madame,

(Translated from the German) D. H. L.

[156]

America

Del Monte Ranch
Quest a, New Mexico
28 June 1924

Dearest Mother -in-Law:

It's so long since I wrote you , but we had much to do here and my
desire for writing is weak. 1 don't know why , but words and speech bore
me a little. We know so well without saying anything. I know you, you
know me , so I need no longer speak on paper.

You know , Frieda is quite proud of her ranch and her horse Azul , that's
the one with two wives — my Poppy , who is very shy but beautiful , sorrel
and quick , and then old Bessy , Brett's horse. Bessy is also red , or sorrel .

Every evening we go down to Del Monte , only three and a half
kilometres , through woods and over the Lobo brook. You know , this
place is called Lobo, which means “wolf" in Spanish.

Frieda is always talking to her Azul. “Yes, Azul, you re a good boy!
Yes, my Azul, go on, go on, then! Yes! Are you afraid, silly horse! It's
only a stone, a great white stone, why are you afraid then?" That's how
she is always talking to him, because she is a little afraid herself.

There is always something to do here. I've written two stories. Right
now we're building a roof over the little veranda before the kitchen door,
with eight small pillars of pinewood and boards on top — very nice. It's
nearly finished. You know, we've also got an Indian oven made of adobe.
It stands outside, not far from the kitchen door, built like a beehive.

Last week came Francisca, the Indian servant at Del Monte. We
baked bread and roasted chickens in the oven — very good. We can bake
twenty loaves of bread in half an hour in it.

Five minutes' walk from here are the tents and beds of the Indians, still
standing . Frieda and I slept there once, under the big stars that hang low
on the mountains here. Morning comes and a beautiful grey squirrel runs
up the balsam pine and scolds us. No one else in the world, only the great

[ 157 ]

. “Not /, But the Wind . . . .

desert below , to the west. We dorCt go much to Taos and Mabel does not
come often. We have our own life . The Brett is a little simple but
harmless y and likes to help . Else writes Friedel is coming to America.
He will likely come here. I think Else may also come , she has a desire for
America. All righty but life in America is empty and stupidy more
empty and stupid than with us. I mean the city and village life. But
herey where one is alone with trees and mountains and chipmunks and
deserty one gets something out of the air y something wild and untamedy
cruel and proudy beautiful and sometimes evil — that is really America.
But not the America of the whites.

Here comes your birthday againyyou old Valkyrie , so you leap on the
horse of your spirit from one year's peak to the next , and look always
further into the future. I send you a cheque. How gladly would I be
withyouy to drink your health in good Moselle. Here there is no wine and
the “prosit” cannot sound through the pines. But next year we will drink
together to your birthday.

Auf Wiedersehen.

D. H. L.

P.S. I for got y we have two small Bibble's-sonsy two little dogs from our
Pips. They are six weeks oldy named Roland and Oliver , and are gay ,
small y and faty and lift their paws like Chinese lions.

(Translated from the German)

[ >58]

FRIEDA LAWRENCE ON AZUL

America

Santa Fe
14 August 1924

[To Else]

We are motoring with Mabel Luhan to the Hopi country — hotter down
here.

Curtis Brown wrote they were arranging with you for “ Boy in the
Bush’' — hope everything is satisfactory, and what a pity Baltimore is so
far.

D. H. L.

[ 159]

“Not I, But the Wind

99

Del Monte Ranch
Questa, New Mexico
26 October 1924

Dear Mother -in-Law:

We are home again , thank God. When one has been for three days
with people one has had enough , quite enough . But next week we are
going away , to stay a few days in Taos , then on to Mexico. Write to me
care of British Consulate , 1 Avenida Madero , Mexico , 2). F., unri/ /
give you a new address.

The Brett will go with us: we do not know what else she could do, and
she cannot remain here alone.

I am glad to go to Mexico. I don't know why , but I always want to
travel south. It is already cold here , especially at night. The sun doesn't
come over the hills till seven-thirty , then it turns warm and the horses
stand stone-still , numbed by the cold , in the middle of the alfalfa field
soaking themselves in the sun's heat. For the most the sun is hot like July
but today there are clouds.

I hope you will get your parcel , with blanket and picture. You will like
them , I'm sure. I send you ten pounds for wood, you must keep nice and
warm.

Here we shut everything up. The better things — silverware , rugs, beds ,
pictures, we take down on the wagon to good William and Rachel. Del
Monte belongs to Mr. Hawk, William's father. The parents have a
biggish house but go to California a lot . The young ones, William and
Rachel, are in the log-cabin where we stayed two years ago. They make
butter there and look after the cows and chickens.

Every evening we ride down to get the milk and the post from William.
He always brings the letters up from the post box. Rachel and William
will take good care of our things. Monday, Mr. Murray, a workman,
comes to put up the shutters. We shall leave the horses here till December

[i6oj

. America .

when the big snow comes . Then William will take them to Del Monte ,
only two and a half kilometres awayy and feed them every day with
alfalfa till spring when we come back again.

I don't know how long we want to stay in Mexico City. I want to go
southward to Oaxaca where the Mayas and Zjnpotec Indians live. It is
always warm there , even hot. There I would like to finish my novel ,
“ The Plumed Serpent

Here the hills are golden with aspen and cottonwoods and red with
scrub-oak , wonderful. The pines and firs nearly black. A lovely
moment , a beautiful moment , but it will not last.

Auf Wiedersehen , mother-in-law. Winter comes again for old ladies ,
too bad.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[161]

“Not I, But the Wind

[A letter to Lawrence from his mother-in-law)

Baden

Sunday 9 November 1924
My dear Fritzl:

Else has vanished in beautiful winter sunshine and I sit alone in my
lonely wintry room . So far I got yesterday when the charwoman
came and today , 0 jubilee, 0 triumph , came the cheque and the parcel .
Like a demon I rushed to the station , number 2 brought the parcel, too
heavy for me, and what came forth! Moved, admiring and happy, I sit
and look . How you have painted! No, how adorable is the ranch!
Here the stones speak! I understand that you love being there . I see it
all — 0 dear son-in-law, how happy you have made me! I would like to
pack up and come. If I were only younger! No, those horses and the
lovely tree! But I think the winter is too cold — and I can smell those
flowers, almost, so charming and gay and colourful. I called all the
ladies in my tempestuous joy and all admired with me. What treasures —
the blanket is just what I needed. The little original cover I put on my
cane chair — My room looks quite Mexican! At once I will have the two
pictures framed and hang them where I can see them — Now I know how
you live, oh, the wonderful tree!

The tablecloth Else shall have for Christmas; the bag is ideal .
All is spread out on the table before me and I do nothing but look
and enjoy it all day! So much love in it all! I feel it so deeply and
gratefully. May it shine into your own lives your thoughts of the
old mother. I am looking forward to Else' s coming back — how she will
open her eyes.

I hope you are really comfortable somewhere and have good news
of the horses and the ranch. The parcel has taken five weeks but
all arrived safely. I hope you found my letters in Mexico. I can't

[162]

America

thank you enough. I have not enjoyed anything so much for a long time
and must always have another look at the cabin .

All luck to you — keep well .

With all my heart, your happy

Mother

(Translated from the German)

[163]

'Not I, But the Wind

Del Monte Ranch
Questa, New Mexico
15 April 1925

My dear Mother-in-Law:

Today came your two letters . So you went up the Merkur. Yes, you
are younger than I am.

We have been at the ranch a week already. We found all well and
safe , nothing broken , nothing destroyed. Only the mice found MabeVs
chair and ate the wool.

In the second house we have two young Indians , Trinidad and
Rufina , husband and wife . Rufina is short and fat, waddles like a duck
in high, white Indian boots — Trinidad is like a girl, with his two plaits.
Both are nice , don't sweat over their work, but do what we want.
We still have the three horses but they are down with the Hawks , till the
alfalfa and the grass have grown a bit.

We had three cold days — the wind can come ice-cold . I had a cold
again . But now the weather is mild and warm, very beautiful , and
spring in the air. All was washed very clean on the land, coming out of a
yard of snow . Now the first anemones have come , built like crocuses but
bigger and prouder, hairy on the brown-red earth under the pines. But
everything is very dry again, the grass has hardly appeared, and yet it
won't grow any higher . We hoped for rain or snow again.

Brett stays down on Del Monte, in a little house by herself, near the
old Hawks. She wanted to come up here but Frieda said no. And so we
are only two whites and two reds, or rather yellow-browns , on the
ranch . Trinidad fetches milk and butter and eggs from Del Monte.
I lie in the sun. Frieda is happy to be on her ranch. Friedel comes
in May — writes very happily, very likely he will return to the Fatherland
at the end of the summer. For September we also think to come to
England and Germany . But the Lord's will be done. We bought a

[164]

THE LAWRENCES* RANCH ON THE

.OBO,

SAN CRISTOBAL, N. M

. . America .

buggy and Trinidad will be coachman. I don9t work this year , am cross
that I was so ill . Mabel is still in New York , but Friday Tony came.

Tomorrow Frieda goes to Taos by car . We are nice and warm here
and have all one needs.

Well that you have friends with you. I send you a little pin-money.

Auf Wicdersehen.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[ *65 j

‘JVb/ /, But the Wind .

S.S. “Resolute”

25 September 1925

Meine liebe Schwiegermutter:

This is the second day at sea — very nice , with blue running water and a
fresh wind. I am quite glad to be out of that America for a time: it's so
tough and wearing , with the iron springs poking out through the padding.

We shall be in England in five more days — I think we shall take a
house by the sea for a while , so Frieda can have her children to stay with
her. And I must go to my sisters and see their new house. And then we
must hurry off to Baden-Baden , before winter sets in.

I don't feel myself very American: no , I am still European . It seems a
long time since we heard from you — I hope it's a nice autumn. In New
York it was horrid , hot and sticky.

Save me a few good Schwarzwald apples , and a bottle of Kirschwasser ,
and a few leaves on the trees , and a few alten Damen in the Stift to call
me Herr Doktor when I'm not one , and a hand at whist with you and my
kurzrockige Schwdgerin , and a Jubilaum in the Stiftskoniginkammer.
The prodigal children come home) vom Schwein gib Is kein mehr , nur vom
Kalb.

d bientdt!

auf baldige Wiedersehen!

hasta luego!

till I see you!

D. H. L.

L >66]

Going Back to Europe

*

At the end of the summer he became restless again and
wanted to go to Europe. To the Mediterranean he wished to go.
So on the coast, not far from Genoa, we found Spotorno, that
Martin Seeker had told us was not overrun with foreigners.
Under the ruined castle I saw a pink villa that had a friendly
look and I wondered if we could have it. We found the peasant
Giovanni who looked after it. Yes, he thought we could. It
belonged to a Tenente dei Bcrsaglieri in Savona. We were
staying at the little inn by the sea, when the bcrsaglieri asked
for us. Lawrence went and returned. “You must come and
look at him, he is so smart. 59 So I went and found a figure in
uniform with gay plumes and blue sash, as it was the Queen’s
birthday. Wc took the Bernarda and the tenente became a
friend of ours. Lawrence taught him English on Sundays, but
they never got very far.

My daughter Barbara, now grown up, was coming to stay
with me. She was coming for the first time. I was beside myself
with joy to have her. I had not waited in vain for so many
years and longed for these children. But Lawrence did not
share my joy. One day at our evening meal came the out¬
burst: “Don’t you imagine your mother loves you,” he said
to Barby; “she doesn’t love anybody, look at her false face.”
And he flung half a glass of red wine in my face. .Barby, who
besides my mother and myself was the only one not to be
scared of him, sprang up. “My mother is too good for you,”
she blazed at him, “much too good; it’s like pearls thrown to

1 167 ]

. 11 Not J, But the Wind . . .” .

the swine.” Then we both began to cry. I went to my room
offended.

“What happened after I went?” I asked Barby later on.

“I said to him: ‘Do you care for her?* ‘It’s indecent to ask,’
he answered; ‘haven’t I just helped her with her rotten paint¬
ing?’ ” Which again puzzled me because he would gladly help
anybody. It did not seem a sign of love to me. Then my
daughter Else came too. But evidently to counterbalance my
show Lawrence had asked his sister Ada and a friend to come
and stay, so there were two hostile camps. Ada arrived and
above me, in Lawrence’s room with the balcony, I could hear
him complaining to her about me. I could not hear the words
but by the tone of their voices I knew.

His sister Ada felt he belonged to her and the past, the past
with all its sad memories. Of course it had been necessary for
him to get out of his past and I had, of equal necessity, to fight
that past, though I liked Ada for herself.

Lawrence was ill with all this hostility. I was grieved for him.
So one evening I went up to his room and he was so glad I came.
I thought all was well between us. In the morning Ada and I
had bitter words. “I hate you from the bottom of my heart,”
she told me. So another night I went up to Lawrence’s room
and found it locked and Ada had the key. It was the only time
he had really hurt me; so I was quite still. “Now I don’t care,”
I said to myself.

He went away with Ada and her friend, hoping at the last I
would say some kind word, but I could not. Lawrence went to
Capri to stay with the Brewsters.

But I was happy with the two children. The spring came with
its almond blossoms and sprouting fig-trees. Barby rushed up
the hills with her paint box, her long legs carrying her like a
deer. We lay in the sun and I rejoiced in her youthful bloom.

[ 1 68 ]

. Going Back to Europe .

Then a picture arrived from Lawrence. There was Jonah on it,
just going to be swallowed by the whale. Lawrence had written
underneath: ‘‘Who is going to swallow whom?”

But I was still angry.

Finally Lawrence came from Capri, wanting to be back.
The children tried like wise elders to talk me round. “Now
Mrs. L.” (so they called me) “be reasonable, you have married
him, now you must stick to him.”

So Lawrence came back. “Make yourself look nice to meet
him,” the children said. We met him at the station all dressed
up. Then we all four had peace. He was charming with Else
and Barby, trying to help them live their difficult young lives.
“Else is not one of those to put the bed on fire, because there is a
flea in it,” Lawrence said of her.

But for his sister Ada he never felt the same again.

[169]

“Not I, But the Wind

>»

Villa Bernarda
Spotorno
Prov. di Genova
i 6 December 1925

My dear Mother-in-Law:

Soon Christmas comes again: here the children have written “ natale **
on every door. But it isn't a great fact in Italy. I was in Savona today:
but you can't buy much there , not much of interest. I bought figs and dates
and raisins , these are good. Tomorrow we will make a parcel for you of
such things , I hope you get it in time for Christmas.

We are having lovely weather here again . Yesterday it wanted to snow ,
but this morning no such thing , only beautiful sunshine. My publisher
Martin Seeker is here , went to Savona with me. He is nice but not
sparkling.

Now it is evening: we are sitting in the kitchen high under the roof
The evening star is white over the hill opposite , underneath the lights of
the village lie like oranges and tangerines , little and shining. Frieda has
devoured her whipped cream from Savona at one gulp , and now she moans
that she hasn't kept any to eat with coffee and cake after supper. Now she
sits by the stove and reads. The soup is boiling. In a moment we call
down into the depth: “ Vieni, Giovanni , e pronto il mangiare." Then the
old man runs up the stairs like an unhappy frog, with his nose in the air ,
sniffing and smelling. It is nice for him to know that there is always
something good for him to eat.

I am sending you a little money, you must always be the Duchess of the
Stift . Be jolly.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[ 170]

VILLA BERNADA, SPOTORNO

. Going Back to Europe .

Villa Bernarda
Spotorno

Riviera di Ponente
Easter Sunday

My dear Mother-in-Law:

I am back . The three women were down at the station when I arrived
yesterday , all dressed up festively , the women , not L For the moment I
am the Easter-lamb . When I went away, I was very cross , but one must
be able to forget a lot and go on.

Frieda has a cold but Else and Barby have grown much stronger and
Barby has painted one or two quite good pictures. I also feel much better ,
almost like in the past , only a little bronchitis. But they say , an English¬
man at forty is almost always bronchial.

We don t know yet what we want to do. We leave this house on the
twentieth and perhaps we'll go to Perugia between Florence and Rome ,
for six or eight weeks. I think I would like to write a book about
Umbria and the Etruscans , half travel-book , also scientific. Perhaps Fll
do this. Then we come to you in June when finally , in God's name , the
weather is fine. Here it's always grey and close y sirocco. I think it is
boiling , but slowly comes the spring.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[171]

'Not /, But the Wind .

Villa Bernarda

Spotorno

Genoa

7 March 1926
Dear Else:

I got back here on Saturday , and found your letter . Frieda has a
bad cold , but the two girls are very well. They are nice girls really ,
it is Frieda , who , in a sense , Aoj made a bad use of them , oj /ar a* / am
concerned.

Frieda thinks to bring them to Baden-Baden for a day or two ,
at the beginning of May. I shall stay in Florence presumably: and
probably Frieda will come back there. I have an idea I might like to
roam round in Umbria for a little while , and look at the Etruscan
things , which interest me.

Thank you very much for offering us Irschenhausen . But I don't
think now that I shall come to Germany till about July , so for heaven's
sake , don't disappoint the young Ehepaar. I am leaving my plans quite
indefinite . I sent you Knopf's Almanac , I thought it would amuse
you. He was inspired to it by the Insel Verlag Almanac. . . . These
copies must cost him three dollars each — and he just presents one to each
of his authors. I also ordered you again “ The Plumed Serpent."

I am glad you had a good time with Nusch — she is really very nice
with me always. I am sorry she couldn't come here.

Will you go to the south of France with Alfred? I was at Monte
Carlo and at Nice , but I couldn't stand it. I didn't like it at all.
But it isn't expensive — pension at the Beau Sejour at Monaco was
fifty francs. They say that Bormes, a little place off the railway , is
very nice , with a very good hotel — not far from Toulon.

I shall be glad when this stupid and muddled winter is at last
over. The weather is still very heavy and overcast > sirocco , not nice •

[ !72 ]

. Going Back to Europe .

It feels as if an earthquake were brewing somewhere .

We leave this house on the twentieth , presumably for Florence .
I hope you'll have a good holiday. Remember me to Friedel , and
Marianne . Brett is sailing for America, for the ranch , at the end of the
month . Tante cose .

D. H. L.

1 173]

. . “Not I, But the Wind

Lawrence wanted to go further into the heart of Italy. The
Etruscan tombs and remains interested him. But the ranch too
called him.

However the idea of having to struggle with immigration
officials, thinking of his tuberculosis, scared him. So he went to
Florence, with Else and Barby. After a short time they went
back to England.

Friends told us of a villa to let in the country about Florence.
So we took a car and went out by the Porta Federicana through
dreary suburban parts till we came to the end of the tramline.

It was April, the young beans were green and the wheat
and the peas up, and we drove into the old Tuscan landscape,
that perfect harmony of what nature did and man made. It
is quite unspoiled there still. Beyond Scandicci we passed two
cypresses and went to the left on a small, little used road. On
the top of one of those Tuscan little hills stood a villa. My heart
went out to it. I wanted that villa. It was rather large, but so
perfectly placed, with a panorama of the Valdarno in front,
Florence on the left, and the umbrella-pine woods behind.

“I do hope it is this one that’s to let,” I said to Lawrence, and
my wish was fulfilled; we could have the villa, we could live in
the Mirenda. We were thrilled by the peasants who belonged to
the podere . . . the Orsini, Bandelli, and Pini. The Orsini
had a wild feud with the Bandelli. The Bandelli fascinated me;
a loosely built, untamed father and easy-going mother, and two
beautiful wild girls, Tosca and Lila, and three beautiful
boys. . . . My special favourite was Dino, who was so gently
grey-eyed and angelic, but you knew perfectly well how he
would laugh at you behind your back. So polite he was,
carrying parcels for me, such exquisite manners at ten years old!
Then I discovered that he looked very pale and ill at times and
they told me that he had a rupture, and, with the brutality of

[174]

. Going Back to Europe .

boys, he told me the boys at school jeered at him for it. So I
went with him to Doctor Giglioli in Florence and poor Dino
was to have an operation. His sisters and I took him to the
hospital, first decking him out with new shirts and vests. He
was miserable, but chiefly miserable because they had put him
among the women, him, a maschio. He was put to bed and,
when we left him there, he crept under the sheets and shook
with misery. Alas, next day, who appeared at home? Dino!
He had crept about the place, seen a man under an anaesthetic,
and fled. It was like putting a wild creature into a hospital.
Then we persuaded him to go back, chiefly by telling him that,
once operated, no one could laugh at him any more. So back
he went, this time he had made up his mind. He was a plucky
boy, and afterwards they told me at the hospital how they had
never had a better, braver patient. It was a jolly hospital, this
Florence one, so human and friendly, not at all prisonlike or too
much white starch of nurses, white tiles, whitewash, white paint
about, that one’s very blood turns white. No, there your friends
came to see you, everybody took a friendly interest in everybody
else; well, such is life, here we are ever so ill, one day, then we
get ever so well again, and then we die; “Ah, signora, cosf 6 la
vita.” And after the operation Dino was a prouder and more
important person than he had ever been in his life, with his
chicken-broth and good foods, and his new vests and shirts and
socks, and two hankies, and actually some eau de Cologne.
And proudly he told his sisters, in superior knowledge, when
they asked for the W.C.: “There is a thing, and you pull, you
must pull, see?” They not having seen such an arrangement
before!

Then Dino came home and he brought me flowers and fruit
and we were very fond of each other, although he never felt
quite at ease with me.

1 1753

. “Not /, But the Wind . . .” .

Our servant was Giulia, from the Pini family. There was the
Pini father, a zio, and a poor old zia, who had been buried in
an earthquake and occasionally had fits, and Pietro who also
helped Giulia about the house, arriving each morning to feed
the chickens and goats, and Stellina, the horse. Giulia had to
cut the grass every day with a sickle to feed all the animals.
In the morning she was barefoot and shabby, but in the after¬
noon, when she heard a motorcar with visitors, she would
appear at the Mirenda in high-heeled shoes and a huge bow
in her hair. We loved Giulia . . . never was anything too
much for her, gay and amusing and wise, she was.

For the first time, there near Florence, I got the Italian,
especially the Tuscan, feel of things. In Florence, the ancient
unbroken flower of a culture made its deep mark on me. The
Misericordia, how deep it impressed me, the voluntary, im¬
mediate effort to help one’s neighbour in distress. And when
people pass it the youngest and the oldest take off their hats
to it. . . . To me this seems real culture. . . . The Miseri¬
cordia dates from the twelfth century and was founded by a
facchino, an interesting story in itself.

Oh, the strange, almost ferocious intelligence of the
Florentines!

What a pleasure it was to walk from the villa Mirenda, and
take the tram in Scandicci to Florence! The handsome
Tuscan girls with their glossy, neatly done hair in the tram . . .
a chicken, sitting, tenderly held by its owner in a red hankie,
its destiny either a sick friend or the mercato. Bottles of wine
are hidden from the Dazio men, men friends embrace each
other, somebody sees a relation and yells something about the
“pasta” for midday, and so on, while we sail gaily on for
Florence. There we would rush to Orioli’s shop, hear his news
and all the news of our friends. We would each dash out and do

[i76]

. Going Back to Europe .

our exciting shopping. Shopping in Florence was still fun, not
the dreary large-store drudgery. . . . There are the paper
shops, leather shops, scent shops, stuffs; one glorious shop sells
nothing but ribbons, velvet and silk, all colours and sizes,
spotted and gold and silver. Another shop, all embroidery
silks. Then to have your shoes made is so comfortable . . . the
shoemaker feels your foot more important than the measuring.
And then the “48” . . . what didn’t we buy at the “48”!

Marionettes and pots and pans, china and glasses and
hammers and paints. We would collect our things at Orioli’s
and drive home with Pietro and Giulia, furnishing the great
kitchen at the Mirenda so conveniently with a few pounds,
Lawrence designing a large kitchen table and brackets from
which the pots hung. We painted the shutters of the Mirenda,
and the chairs, green; we put “stuoie,” thick pale grass matting,
on the red-tiled floor in the big sitting-room. We had a few
Vallombrosa chairs, a round table, a piano, hired, a couch and
an old seat. The walls were syringed white with the syringe one
uses to put verderane on the vines . . . that was done fast, and
the sun poured into the big room so still and hot. The only
noises came from the peasants, calling or singing at their work,
or the water being drawn at the well. Or best, and almost too
fierce, were the nightingales singing away from early dawn,
almost the clock round ... an hour or two’s rest at midday
in the heat. The spring that first year was a revelation in
flowers, from the first violets in the woods . . . carpets of them
we found, and as usual in our walks we took joyful possession
of the unspoiled, almost medieval country around us. By the
stream in the valley were tufts of enormous primroses, where
the willow trees had been blood red through the winter. On
the edge of the umbrella-pine woods, in the fields, were red and
purple big anemones, strange, narrow-pointed, red and yellow

[177]

J9

. "J/ot /, But the Wind

wild tulips, bee orchids and purple orchids, tufts of tight-
scented lavender . . . flowers thick like velvety carpets, like
the ground in a Fra Angelico picture.

Our carriage and the Stellina were so small, I felt like sitting
in a doll’s perambulator. One day I went shopping with
Pietro in Scandicci, when he had tooth-ache; he wore a red
hankie round his poor swollen cheek, and on top on the
hankie perched a hat, a bit sideways, with the Italian chic in
it. He was very sorry for himself, and so was I, but none of the
people we passed seemed to think us a funny sight, and we
must have been, in that tiny barroccino, Pietro with his tooth¬
ache and his hankie by my side.

The Italians are so natural, one has tooth-ache and why hide
it? Pietro would tell me: “Si, signora, questa sera vado a fare
all’amore con la mia fidanzata.” The fidanzata had only one
eye, she was pretty, but in a self-conscious way she always kept
the side with the eye toward one.

Christmas came and I wanted to make a Christmas tree for
all the peasants. I told Pietro: “Buy me a tree in Florence,
when you go to market.”

“What,” he said, “buy a tree, signora? Ah, no, one doesn’t
buy a tree, I’ll get the signora one from the prete’s wood.”

On Christmas Day, or rather Christmas Eve, at four in the
morning I heard a whisper: “Signora! Signora!” under my
window. I looked out and there was Pietro with a large beauti¬
ful tree. He brought it in and how Lawrence and I and
Giulia and Pietro enjoyed trimming that tree. There were
pine-cones on it and we put gold and silver paper around
these cones and Pietro would yell: “Guarda, guarda, signora,
che bellezza!” while Lawrence and I went on trimming the
tree with a lot of shiny things bought at the “48”; silver
threads that caWed “Christ Child hair55 when I was small,

[178]

. Going Back to Europe .

and also lots and lots of candies. The Christmas tree looked so
beautiful in that big white empty room, not a bit Christian, and
how the peasant children loved their cheap wooden toys and
how carefully they handled them, so precious were they. They
had never had toys before. The grown-ups loved it too. We
had difficulty in making them all go home again.

Such a sweetness and perfection of successive flowering
Florence meant to us. We walked in the afternoons, almost
awed through so much unknown, unobtrusive loveliness . . .
the white oxen so carefully ploughing, between the cypresses,
and flowers in the wheat, and beans and peas and clover! At
twilight we would come home and light our stove in the big
sitting-room, the stove that had been there for centuries, used as
it had been to keep the silkworms warm in the winter . . .
now it warmed us. We had no pictures on the walls, but
Maria Huxley had left some canvases behind and I said:
“Let’s have some pictures.”

Then, mixing his paints himself, boldly and joyfully, Law¬
rence began to paint. I watched him for hours, absorbed,
especially when he began a new one, when he would mix his
paints on a piece of glass, paint with a rag and his fingers, and
his palm and his brushes. “Try your toes next,” I would say.
Occasionally, when I was cooking pigeons that tasted of wine
because they had fed on the dregs of grapes from the wine¬
press, or washing, he would call me, and I would have to hpld
out an arm or a leg for him to draw, or tell him what I thought
of his painting.

He enjoyed his painting . . . with what intensity he went
for it! Then he wrote “Lady Chatterley.” After breakfast —
we had it at seven or so — he would take his book and pen and
a cushion, followed by John the dog, and go into tfie woods
behind the Mirenda and come back to lunch with what he

[ 179]

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F ac-simile : j' Instinct

Sanity j Intuition
\Spirit

The English have never painted from intuition or instinct.

Man has two selves: one unknown, vital, living from roots: the other
the known self, like a picture in a mirror or the objects on a tray.
People live from this latter. And this latter can only feel known feel¬
ings: and its only experience of liberation or freedom is in the experience
of novelty, which is the clash of sensation and a katabolic process.

[i8o]

. Going Back to Europe .

had written. I read it day by day and wondered how his
chapters were built up and how it all came to him. I wondered
at his courage and daring to face and write these hidden things
that people dare not write or say.

For two years “Lady Chatterley55 lay in an old chest that
Lawrence had painted a greeny yellow with roses on it, and
often when I passed that chest, I thought: “Will that book ever
come out of there?5 5

Lawrence asked me: “Shall I publish it, or will it only bring
me abuse and hatred again?55 I said: “You have written it,
you believe in it, all right, then publish it.55 So one day we
talked it all over with Orioli; we went to a little old-fashioned
printer, with a little old printing shop where they had only
enough type to do half the book — and “Lady Chattcrley55 was
printed. When it was done, stacks and stacks of “Lady C . . .
or Our Lady, as we called it — were sitting on the floor of
Orioli’s shop. There seemed such a terrific lot of them that I
said in terror: “We shall never sell all these.” A great many
were sold before there was a row; first some did not arrive at
their destination in America, then there came abuse from
England . . . but it was done ... his last great effort.

He had done it . . . and future generations will benefit, his
own race that he loved and his own class, that is less inhibited,
for he spoke out of them and for them, there in Tuscany,
where the different culture of another race gave the impetus to.
his work.

One winter we went to Diablerets and stayed in a little
chalet. Aldous Huxley and Maria, Julian Huxley and Juliette,
and their children shared a big villa nearby. Maria read “Lady
C.” there and Juliette was shocked at first. But then it was
meant to be a shock. I can see Aldous and Lawrence talking
together by the fire. I remember Aldous patiently trying to

[181]

V . . “tot J, But the Wind - -

teach me to ski, but my legs tied themselves into knots with the
skis and I seemed to be most of the time sitting in the snow
collecting my legs.

We went for picnics in the snow, the Huxleys ski-ing, Lawrence
and I in a sledge. I saw Diablerets again later on in the
summer — I didn’t recognize it, so completely different it looked
in the snow.

I think the greatest pleasure and satisfaction for a woman is to
live with a creative man, when he goes ahead and fights — I
found it so. Always when he was in the middle of a novel or
writing I felt happy as if something were happening, there was a
new thing coming into the world. Often before he conceived
a new idea he was irritable and disagreeable, but when it had
come, the new vision, he could go ahead, and was eager and
absorbed.

We had a very hot summer that year and we wanted to go to
the mountains. One hot afternoon Lawrence had gathered
peaches in the garden and came in with a basket full of wonder¬
ful fruit — he showed them to me — a very little while after he
called from his room in a strange, gurgling voice; I ran and
found him lying on his bed; he looked at me with shocked eyes
while a slow stream of blood came from his mouth. “Be quiet,
be still,” I said. I held his head, but slowly and terribly the
blood flowed from his mouth. I could do nothing but hold him
and try to make him still and calm and send for Doctor Giglioli.
He came, and anxious days and nights followed. In this great
heat of July nursing was difficult — Giulia, all the peasants —
helped in every possible way. The signor was so ill — Giulia got
down to Scandicci at four in the morning and brought ice in
sawdust in a big handkerchief, and milk, but this, even boiled
straightaway, would be sour by midday. The Huxleys came to
see him, Maria with a great bunch of fantastically beautiful

[ 182]

FRIEDA, LAWRENCE, AND HUXLEY AT THE MIRENDA

. Going Back to Europe .

lotus, and Giglioli every day, and Orioli came and helped.
But I nursed him alone night and day for six weeks, till he was
strong enough to take the night train to the Tyrol.

This was another inroad his illness made. We both fought
hard and won.

People came to see us at the Mirenda. Capitano Ravagli had
to come to Florence for a military case — he came to see us and
showed Lawrence his military travel-pass. When Lawrence
saw on it: Capitano Ravagli deve par tire (must leave ) at such and
such a time ... he shook his head and said resentfully: “Why
‘must? why ‘must? there shouldn’t be any must . . . .”

One Sunday afternoon Osbert and Edith Sitwell came. They
moved us strangely. They seemed so oversensitive, as if some¬
thing had hurt them too much, as if they had to keep up a brave
front to the world, to pretend they didn’t care and yet they only
cared much too much. When they left, we went for a long walk,
disturbed by them.

That autumn we gave up the Mirenda. Lawrence had been
so ill there and wanted the sea. I went to pack up at the
Mirenda, it was a grief to me. I had been so very happy there
except for Lawrence’s illness. How great the strain was at
times, always the strain of his health. The last ounce of my
strength seemed to be drained at times but I had my reward.
He got better and I always knew however tired I might be he
felt worse than ever I could. Making another effort my own
strength grew. I never had time to think of my own health, so
it looked after itself and it never let me down. The peasants at
the Mirenda, the very place itself, the woods with their umbrella
pines, the group of buildings, seemed sad at being left.

The peasants took all the belongings we had collected and
carried them away on their backs, like gnomes they crept under
their loads down the path. When I gave a last look from the two

[183]

. " Not /, But the Wind . . ” .

cypress trees along the road there stood the Mirenda upon its
hill in the evening sun, with its shutters closed, old and solid, it
seemed as if its eyes had closed for sleep, to dream of the life that
had been and gone.

Lawrence had gone to Port Cros with Richard Aldington,
Brigit Patmore, and Dorothy Yorke — Arabella we called her.

I joined them there. Port Cros seemed an island of mush¬
rooms — I had never seen so many as there on the moist warm
ground of the undergrowth. We had a donkey and a man who
worked for us and brought up the food from the little harbour
below. Lawrence was not well and I remember how we all did
our best on the top of that island to help him in every way.

We drank coffee in the inner space of the small fortress we
lived in. The donkey looked on and Richard jumped up to play
the brave toreador, waving his blue scarf at the donkey. Jasper
was its name. Jasper fled into the bushes but its long ears stuck
out and he had to peep at Richard — he hadn’t got the bullfight
idea, but was intrigued.

Richard was an education in itself to me: he knew so much
about Napoleon, for instance, and made me see Napoleon from
a different angle, the emotional power he had over his men.
Richard told me of his war experiences, death experience and
beyond death: it seemed to melt one’s brain away; Richard
began writing his “Death of a Hero” there in Port Cros. One
day we went bathing in the bluest little bay, when an
octopus persecuted Brigit and Richard had to beat it away.

We wanted to go to the mainland, not to be so far away with
Lawrence so frail. So we left for Toulon, gay Toulon with its
ships and sailors and shops, real sailors’ shops, with boxes
adorned with shells, ships made of shells, long knives from
Corsica, on which was written: “Che la mia ferita sia mortale.”

Near Toulon, at Bandol, in the hotel Beau Rivage we stayed

[184]

. Going Back to Europe .

all winter. A sunny hotel by the sea, friendly and easy as only
Provence can be. We seemed to live completely the life of a
“petit rentier,” as Rousseau le Douanier has painted it. Law¬
rence wrote “Pansies” in his room in the morning, then we went
to have our aperitif before lunch in a cafe on the sea-front.
There was a small war memorial, a gay young damsel that
would please any poilu. We knew all the dogs of the small place,
we saw the boats come in, their silvery loads of sardines glitter¬
ing on the sand of the shores. Lawrence was better that winter
in health. He watched the men playing “boccia” on the shore,
after lunch. We seemed to share the life of the little town,
running along so easily. We went with the bus to Toulon.
We saw the coloured soldiers. We went to a beautiful circus.
Yes, easy and sunny was this winter in Bandol.

The Huxleys came and later on they found a house across the
bay at Sanary. I see us sitting in the sunny dining-room of the
Beau Rivage, and Lawrence saying to Maria: “No, Maria, you
would not be a bit nice if you were really very rich.”

In the spring we went to Spain from Marseilles — to Barcelona,
from there to Mallorca. Mallorca still has a depth to it, a slight
flavour of Africa, a distance in its horizon over the sea.

Our hotel was by a small bay. Deliciously hot, the days
went by. We went all over the island, always wary not to tire
Lawrence. I bathed in the heat of midday and climbed the
rocks with the little bay entirely to myself. But one day I
looked around and saw a Spanish officer on a splendid horse,
looking out towards the sea; I was disturbed in my loneliness
and wanted to dash to my bathing cloak and go away. I
sprang on to a heap of seaweeds that had a hole underneath it
and rocks. Like a gunshot my ankle snapped, I collapsed sick
with pain. The officer rode up and offered me his horse that
danced about. I thought: what a waste of a romantic situation;

[185]

. “Not /, But the Wind . . ” .

the ankle hurts so much, I can’t get on to a prancing horse — if
I could only be alone with this pain.

Lawrence appeared, got two young men to take me to the
hotel in their car. The ankle did not hurt any more, but it was
broken.

Lawrence wanted me to go to London to be there for the
exhibition of his paintings. A gay flag with his name was flying
outside the Warren Gallery when I went there. His pictures
looked a little wild and overwhelming in the elegant, delicate
rooms of the galleries. But never could I have dreamed that a
few pictures could raise such a storm. I had not realized their
potency in the big, bare rooms of the Mirenda, where they had
been born so naturally, as if Tuscany had given its life to them.
I was astonished. Then the Police came and put them in the
cellar of Marlborough Street Police Station to be destroyed.
I was worried lest the cellar be damp and so destroy them that
way. But no, they were saved; it was a fight, though.

Meanwhile Lawrence was ill in Florence. What with the
abuse of “Lady Chatterley” and the disapproval of the pictures,
he had become ill. Orioli telegraphed in distress. So off I set on
my journey to Florence, my ankle still wobbly and aching and
with constant worry in my mind of how I would find Lawrence.
Orioli told me that after receiving my telegram saying I was
coming, he had said: “What will Frieda say when she arrives?”
And Lawrence had answered: “Do you see those peaches in the
bowl? She will say, ‘What lovely peaches,’ and she will devour
them.” So it was. After my first look at Lawrence, when his
eyes had signalled to me their relief, “She is here with me,” I
felt my thirst from the long journey and ate the peaches.

He always got better when I was there. But Orioli told me
how scared he had been when he had seen Lawrence, his head
and arms hanging over the side of the bed, like one dead.

[186]

. Going Back to Europe .

We left the heat of Florence for the Tegernsee to be near
Max Mohr. We had a rough peasant house, it was autumn.
Lawrence rested a great deal. My sister Else came to see him,
and Alfred Weber. When he was alone with Alfred Weber, he
said to him: “Do you see those leaves falling from the apple
tree? When the leaves want to fall you must let them fall.5*
Max Mohr had brought some doctors from Munich, but
medicine did not help Lawrence. His organism was too frail
and sensitive. I remember some autumn nights when the end
seemed to have come. I listened for his breath through the
open door, all night long, an owl hooting ominously from the
walnut tree outside. In the dim dawn an enormous bunch of
gentians I had put on the floor by his bed seemed the only living
thing in the room. But he recovered and slowly Max Mohr
and I travelled with him south again to Bandol.

After the Mirenda we seemed to live chiefly for his health.
Switzerland and the sea one after the other seemed to do him
most good. He did not want any doctors or cures. “I know so
much better about myself than any doctor,” he would say.
His life became a struggle for health. And yet he would rise
above it so amazingly and his spirit brought forth immortal
flowers right up to the very end. One of his desires was to
write a novel about each continent. Africa and Asia still he
wanted to do. It was not given to him to do so. As one of my
Indian friends here said: “Why didn’t Mr. Lawrence write
about the whole world? He knew all about it.” When he had
read “The Lost Girl” he said: “What happened to those people
afterwards? I want to know their story till they die.”

Here these Indians seem to understand him so immediately —
better, I believe, than his white fellowmen.

[187]

'Not I, But the Wind .

The Nightingale
By D. H. Lawrence

Tuscany is full of nightingales, and in spring and summer
they sing all the time, save in the middle of the night and the
middle of the day. In the little leafy woods that hang on the
steep of the hill toward the streamlet, as maidenhair hangs on
a rock, you hear them piping up in the wanness of dawn,
about four o’clock in the morning: Hello! Hello! Hello! It is
the brightest sound, perhaps, of all sounds in the world: a
nightingale piping up. Every time you hear it, you feel a
wonder and, it must be confessed, a thrill, because the sound
is so bright, so glittering, and it has such power behind it.

“There goes the nightingale!” you say to yourself: and it is
as if the stars were darting up from the little thicket and leaping
away into the vast vagueness of the sky, to be hidden and
gone. And every single time you hear the nightingale afresh,
your second thought is: “Now why do they say he is a sad
bird?”

He is the noisiest, most inconsiderate, most obstreperous
and jaunty bird in the whole kingdom of birds. How John
Keats managed to begin his “Ode to a Nightingale” with
“My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my senses
. . — well, I for one don’t know. You can hear the night¬

ingale silverily shouting: “What? What? What, John? Heart
aches and a drowsy numbness pains? — tra-la-la!-tri-li-lily-
lilyly!”

[188]

. Going Back to Europe .

And why the Greeks said he — or she — was sobbing in a bush
for a lost lover, again I don’t know. Jug-jug-jug! say the
medieval writers, to represent the rolling of the little balls of
lightning in the nightingale’s throat. A wild rich sound, richer
than the eyes in a peacock’s tail.

“And the bright brown nightingale, amorous,

Is half assuaged for Itylus — ”

They say, with that jug! jug! jug! that she is sobbing. It really
is mysterious, what people hear. You’d think they had their
ears on upside down. Anyone who ever heard the nightingale
“sobbing” must have quite a different hearing-faculty from
the one I’ve got.

Anyhow, it’s a male sound, a most intensely and undilutedly
male sound. And pure assertion. There is not a hint nor shadow
of echo and hollow recall. Nothing at all like a hollow low bell.
Nothing in the world so unforlorn.

Perhaps that is what made Keats straightway feel forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Perhaps that is the reason of it: why they all hear sobs in the
bush, where any really normal listening mortal hears the silver
ringing shouts of cherubim. Perhaps because of the discrepancy.

Because, as a matter of fact, the nightingale sings with a
ringing, punching vividness and a pristine assertiveness that
makes a mere man sit down and consider. It is the kind of
brilliant calling and interweaving of glittering exclamation
which must have been heard on the first day of creation, when
the angels suddenly found themselves created in brightness,
and found themselves able to shout aloud. Then there must
have been a nightingaleish to-do! Hello! Hello! Behold!
Behold! Behold! It is I! It is I! What a mar-mar-marvellous
occurrence! What?

[189]

9»

. "Not /, But the Wind

For the pure splendid splendidness of vocal assertion: Lo!
It is I! you have to listen to the nightingale. Perhaps for the
visual perfection of the same assertion, you have to look at a
peacock shaking all his eyes. Among all creatures created in
positive splendour, these two are perhaps the most perfect:
the one in invisible, triumphing sound, the other in voiceless
visibility. The nightingale is a quite undistinguished grey-
brown bird, if you do see him: although he’s got that tender
hopping mystery about him, of a thing that is rich alive inside.
Just as the peacock, when he does make himself heard, is
awful, but still impressive: such a fearful shout from out of the
menacing jungle. You can actually see him, in Ceylon, yell
from a high bough, then stream away past the monkeys, into
the impenetrable jungle that seethes and is dark.

And, perhaps, for this reason — the reason, that is, of pure
angel-keen self-assertion — the nightingale makes a man feel
sad, and the peacock so often makes him feel angry. Because
they are so triumphantly positive m their created selves,
eternally new from the hand of the rich bright God, and per¬
fect. The nightingale simply ripples with his own perfection.
And the peacock arches all his bronze and purple eyes with
assuredness.

This, this rippling assertion of perfection, this emerald
shimmer of a perfect self, makes men angry or melancholy,
according as it assails the eye or the ear. The ear is much less
cunning than the eye. You can say to somebody: I like you
awfully: you look so beautiful this morning! and they’ll believe
it utterly, though your voice may really be vibrating with
mortal hatred. The ear is so stupid, it will accept any amount of
false money in words. But let one tiny gleam of the mortal
hatred come into your eye, or across your face, and it will
be detected instantly. The eye is so shrewd and rapid.

[190]

. Going Back to Europe .

For this reason, we see the peacock at once, in his showy
male self-assertion: and we say, rather sneeringly: Fine feathers
make fine birds! But when we hear the nightingale, we don’t
know what we hear, we only know we feel sad: forlorn! And
so we say it is the nightingale that is sad.

The nightingale, let us repeat, is the most unsad thing in
the world: even more unsad than the peacock full of gleam.
The nightingale has nothing to be sad about. He feels perfect
with life. It isn’t conceit. He just feels life perfect, and he trills
it out, shouts, jugs, gurgles, calls, declares, asserts, and triumphs,
but never reflects. It is pure music, in so far as you could never
put words to it. But there are words for the feelings aroused
in us by the song. No! even that is not true. There are no
words to tell what one really feels, hearing the nightingale. It
is something so much more pure than words. But it is some
sort of feeling of triumph in one’s own life perfection. Keats
feels this all, through his ode.

’ Tis not through envy of thy happy lot ,

But being too happy in thy happiness , —

That thouy light-winged Dryad of the trees ,

In some melodious plot
Of beechen green , and shadows numberless ,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease * . . .

It is beautiful poetry, of a truthful poet. And Keats keeps
it up, in the next stanza, wanting to drink the blushful
Hippocrene and fade away with the nightingale into the
forest dim.

Fade far away9 dissolve , and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known ,

The weariness , the fever , and the fret ...

It is such lovely poetry! But the next line is a bit ridiculous,
so I won’t quote it. Yes, I will:

[ 191 ]

. “Not I, But the Wind ” .

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs . . . etc.

This is Keats, not the nightingale. — But Keats still tries to
break away, and get over into the nightingale world.

Away ! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy . . .

He doesn’t succeed, however. The viewless wings of Poesy
carry him only into the bushes, not into the nightingale world.
He is still outside.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death . . .

I am sure the sound of the nightingale never made any man
in love with easeful death — except by contrast. The contrast
between the bright flame of positive pure self-perfection, in the
bird, and the uneasy flame of waning selflessness, for ever
reaching out to be something not himself, in the poet!

To cease upon the midnight with no pain.

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain —

To thy high requiem become a sod.

How astonished the nightingale would be if he could be
made to realize what sort of answer the poet was answering to
his song I He would fall of? the bough with amazement.

Because a nightingale, when you answer him back, only
shouts and sings louder. Suppose a few other nightingales
pipe up in the neighbouring bushes — as they always do — then,
the blue-white sparks of sound go dazzling up to heaven. And
suppose you, mere mortal, happen to be sitting on the shady
bank having an altercation with the mistress of your' heart,
hammer and tongs, then the chief nightingale swells and goes

[*92]

. . . . Going Back to Europe . . . .

it like Caruso in the third act, simply a brilliant, bursting
frenzy of music, singing you down: till you simply can’t hear
yourself speak to quarrel, and you have to laugh.

There was, in fact, something very like a nightingale in
Caruso, that bird-like bursting miraculous energy of song and
self-utterance, and self-luxuriance.

Thou wast not born for death , immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down . . .

Not yet in Tuscany, anyhow. They are twenty to the dozen.
And the cuckoo seems remote and low-voiced, calling, low,
half-secretive, even as he flies past. — Perhaps really it is
different in England.

The voice I heard this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn.

I wonder what sort of answer they all made! Diocletian,
for instance! And disop! And Mademoiselle Ruth! I strongly
suspect the last young lady of giving the nightingale occasion to
sing, like the nice damsel in the Boccaccio story, who went to
sleep with the nightingale in her hand: “tua figliuola 6 stata
si vaga dell’usignuolo, che ella l’ha preso e tienlosi in mano.”

And I wonder what the hen nightingale thinks of it all, as
she mildly sits upon the eggs and hears milord giving himself
forth? Probably she likes it, for she goes on breeding him true
to type. Probably she likes it better than if, like the poet, he
humbly warbled:

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain .....

One sympathizes with Keats’s Fanny, and understands why
she wasn’t having any. Much she’d have got out of such a mid-

[193]

. “Mot I, But the Wind . . ” . .

night! Perhaps, when all’s said and done, the female of the
species prefers it when the male of the species is full of his own
bright life, and warbles her into the spell of himself. In the
end, she gets more out of it that way.

Because, of course, though the nightingale is utterly un¬
conscious of the little dim hen while he sings, she knows well
enough that the song is half her; just as the eggs are half his.
And just as she doesn’t want him coming and putting a heavy
foot down on her little bunch of eggs, he doesn’t want her to
go nestling down on his song and smothering it, or muffling it.
Every man to his trade, and every woman to hers.

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades . . .

It never was a plaintive anthem, it was Caruso at his best.
But don’t argue with a poet.

[ 194]

Going Back to Europe

Villa Mirenda

Scandicci

Firenze

26 March 1926
My dear Else:

The Schweigermutter wrote from Baden that you aren't well , and
had a little operation . That's bad luck! I do hope you're better .

It isn't a good year, anyhow . Here it has rained and rained , till the
country is turning yellow with wetness . But these last two days are
sunny and warm: but not hot , as it should be.

We took the top half of this old villa , out on one of the little hills of
Tuscany , about seven miles from Florence. We are two kilometres
from the tram , which takes us in to the Duomo in half an hour . The
country around is pretty — all poderi and pinewoods , and no walls at
all . I hope in the autumn , really, you'll come and stay a while: unless
everything goes muddled again. For myself I struggle to get back
into a good humour , but don't succeed very well. — We've got the villa
for a year , anyhow , so there should be time.

Myself I am labouring at the moment to type Frieda's MS. of the
play “David.” It's a slow business , I'm no typist. But it is just as
Well for me to go through the MS. myself and it is good for me to learn
some German , I suppose.

Frieda's daughter Else typed the first twenty-six pages and there
are a fair number of alterations. But I shall send you the typescript
as soon as it is finished: within a month , pray God! — / am interested ,
really , to see the play go into German , so much simpler and more direct
than in English. English is really very complicated in its meanings.
Perhaps the simpler a language becomes in its grammar ajid syntax ,
the more subtle and complex it becomes in its suggestions. Anyhow >
this flay seems to me much more direct and dramatic in German , much

[ 195]

o

))

. “ Not I, But the Wind

less poetic and suggestive than in English. I shall be interested to know
what you think of it.

I said to myself I would write perhaps a book about the Etruscans:
nothing pretentious , but a sort of book for people who will actually be
going to Florence and Cortona and Perugia and Volterra and those
places, to look at the Etruscan things. They have a great attraction
for me: there are lovely things in the Etruscan Museum here, which
no doubt you've seen. But I hope you'll come in the autumn and look
at them again with me. Mommsen hated everything Etruscan, said the
germ of all degeneracy was in the race. But the bronzes and terracottas
are fascinating, so live with physical life, with a powerful physicality
which surely is as great, or sacred, ultimately, as the ideal of the
Greeks and Germans. Anyhow, the real strength of Italy seems to me
in this physicality, which is not at all Roman. — I haven't yet seen any
of the painted tombs at ... !

[196]

Going Back to Europe

Grand Hotel
Chexbres-sur-Vevey
Sunday Morning

Had your p.c. this morning — glad you found Nusch there. I guess
you'll schwatzen schwatzen all the day. Today is better here — am
sitting on my little balcony to write this — Achsah has already sent Earl
down with a cup of Ovalline — and it is sunny in snatches. I worked
over my Isis story a bit — am going to try it on Earl. Last night we
sang songs, Twankydillo, etc., up in Achsah' s attic. Everything very
quiet and domestic.

Had a few letters forwarded from Florence this morning: enclose
the Curtis Brown. Ask Else what she thinks about a complete break
in November with Insel Verlag. Of course it is insolence on their part
that they won't tell my agents what they are doing with my books.
They should of course write Miss Watson about the proposed book of
short stories. Ask Else about it — what they are really doing. And ask
her if she kept that short biography of me which she did for the “ Frank¬
furter Zeitung" man. If she did, you might look it over and send it
to Miss Watson, in English, for this Kra man. I simply can't write
biographies about myself. Damn them all.

A sort of lamentable letter from Cath Carswell — no money, etc. —
and still fussing about what Yvonne Franchetti said about that typing.
Then a letter from the irrepressible Durham miner man — wanting
“ Lady C." very much — nothing else — no word from Orioli though it's
his handwriting on the envelopes. Nothing from Huxleys either, save
their telegram. Madame will have a double room for them. Wish
they'd bring their car, we could look at places a bit higher. I told you
they arrive next Tuesday or Wednesday. There is nothirig forwarded
from that St.-Nizier place.

1 think of you in the Schwiegermutter's room with Nusch there.

[ *97]

. . . "Not /, But the Wind . : ” .

Has die Anna got any flowers? Buy her a nice pot from me. And buy
something for Nusch for twenty marks. I want her to have something
for a quid. Only not Schnecken or foie gras. I now smell Braten of
some sort. Perhaps we shall go to Vevey this afternoon. We want
to go to Gruyire when you come back — also to Le Pont , which is
M . Stucke's other hotel about three thousand feet up, with three little
lakes . Might go there . But he leases it in summer to another hotelier.
What are Nusch? s plans? Love to you all — the goddesses three.

D. H. L.

[198]

Going Back to Europe

At Bailathadan
Newtonmore
Inverness
20 August 1926

Dear Else:

Frieda sent me on your letter from Irschenhausen. I am glad you
like being there, but am surprised it is so cold. Here the weather is
mild, mixed rainy and sunny. The heather is out on the moors: the day
lasts till nine o'clock: yet there is that dim, twilight feeling of the
North. We made an excursion to the west, to Fort William and
Mallaig, and sailed up from Mallaig to the Isle of Skye. I liked it
very much. It rains and rains, and the white wet clouds blot over the
mountains. But we had one perfect day, blue and iridescent, with the
bare northern hills sloping green and sad and velvety to the silky blue
sea. There is still something of an Odyssey up there, in among the
islands and the silent lochs: like the twilight morning of the world,
the herons fishing undisturbed by the water, and the sea running far
in, for miles, between the wet, trickling hills, where the cottages are
low and almost invisible, built into the earth. It is still out of the
world, and like the very beginning of Europe: though, of course, in
August there are many tourists and motorcars. But the country is almost
uninhabited.

I am going south tomorrow, to stay with my sisters in Lincolnshire
for a little while, by the sea. Then really I should like to come to
Bavaria, if only for a fortnight. I have a feeling that I want to come
again to Bavaria. I hope I shan't have to stay in England for that play.
I would much rather come to Germany at the end of August. And
Frieda , I know, has had enough, more than enough, of London. Perhaps
after all we can come to Irschenhausen for the first part of September,
and- let that inhalation wait a while. — I am much better since I am here

[199]

. "Not I, But the Wind . . .

in Scotland: it suits me here: and probably the altitude of Irschenhausen
would suit me too. Anyhow we could go back to Baden to do a bit of
inhaling. There is no hurry to get to Italy. — If only I need not stay
in London for that play.

I find it most refreshing to get outside the made world, if only for a
day — like to Skye. It restores the old Adam in one. The made world
is too deadening — and too dead.

So I am still hoping to see you all — Friedel will be there? — in
Bayern, quite soon. Why should one be put off, from what one wants
to do.

Auf Wiedersehen.

D. H. L.

[aoo]

Going Back to Europe

Duneville
Trusthorpe Rd.

Sutton-on-Sea, Lincs.

7 September, 1926

My dear Else:

I had your letter today. Pm very disappointed not to be able to come
to Irschenhausen. Those fools are still delaying beginning the play.
We go to London on Saturday — Pm not sure of the address — and I
shall see what I can do. But 1 am annoyed and bored beforehand.

But I doubt if we could get to Bavaria before the end of the month.
Too late! I shall have to wait till spring , and go straight to Irschen¬
hausen from Italy, if I may.

I expect we shall be in Baden, at least a day or two — travel over
Paris. So we shall see you. 1 do hope you are feeling better. What
makes you so knocked up?

It's dull weather here — a grey sky, a grey sea. My thoughts are
turning south. The swifts are already going, and the swallows are
gathering to go. Nothing to stay for.

Auf Wiedersehen.

D. H. L.

[201 ]

* Not /, But the Wind .

Villa Mirenda
Scandicci
Florence
12 October, 1926

Dear Else:

I have just had the enclosed • letter from my agent . My agreement
with him is suchy that the contracts for all the things I publish must
be made through him , and all payments must be made to him .
He deducts ten per cent for himself and deposits the rest to my
account .

Will you please tell me what contract you made with the Insel
Verlag for “ Der Fuchs”: and what were the payments , apart from
the translator's fee? I know it was not much . But of course I owe
Curtis Brown ten per cent on it .

And in future will you see that everything goes through the agent's
hands , or I shall be in trouble , as I am legally bound to him: he is quite
good to me. It's my fault , I know y for not remembering sooner .

We have been back here just a week , and I am very glad to sit still
in the peace of these quiet rooms. I am getting really tired of moving
about , and cast round in my mind for a place which I shall keep as a
permanency. Perhaps it will be in England.

It is warm here , almost hot still. The vendemmia finished last week9
and we are all festooned with grapes. But the Schwiegermutter says
that you too were in Venice. Venice is lovely in autumns if it's not too
crowded. Do you feel content now , for the winter?

They are producing the “David” play in December. I saw the
producer and the people concerned , and I promised to go to England
to help them at the end of November. I am not very sure if I shall do
soy though. But if we doy we must come through Baden. I daren't say
anythingy because I know the Schwiegermutter was cross with us for

[ 202 ]

. Going Back to Europe . . .

putting off again this time . But we had moved so much , we were both
feeling stupefied .

I wonder how the translation of the “ Serpent ” is going. Tou will
find it a long job: I hope not too tedious . Myself \ 1 am not working
at anything particular : don't feel inclined .

I hope you are feeling well. Are the children all busy againy Friedel
in Berlin? Here it seems so sleepy — the world is all vague.

Love ,

D. H. L.

[2033

"Not I, But the Wind .

Villa Mirenda

SCANDICCI

Firenze

i 8 October, 1926
Dear Else:

Kippenberg behaves as if he were the great Chan of Tartary: whereas
he's only a tiresome old buffer. I have told him that once personally ,
I don't care for Franzius's pompous and heavy translation: I'll tell
him again, and to hell with him. Pity we can't change over to the
people who did “ Jack in Bushland." They are more up to date and
go-ahead.

But anyhow Kip has no right over magazine productions: so if you
could get “ The Woman Who Rode Away" into a Monatsheft, you
couldn't be interfered with, by him at least. I get awfully bored ,
between publishers and agents, and one state and another.

So now you'll be off to Vienna! Everybody seems to have been to
Vienna, or to be going. Glad I needn't go, anyhow just now.

I'll tell Curtis Brown what you say about "Fox."

Sunny autumn here, still and nice: but an epidemic of typhoid in
the neighbourhood: must look out.

I feel I'll never write another novel: that damned old Franzius
turning “ The Plumed Serpent" into a ponderous boa constrictor! 0
Germania! It really is time you bobbed your philosophic hair!

Wiedersehen,

D. H. L.

[204]

Going Back to Europe

Villa Mirenda
Scandicci
Florence
io January, 1927

Dear Else:

That was a nice letter you wrote — and a very nice little purse you
sent me for Christmas . I ought to have thanked you before — but
something has happened to me about letters — in fact all writing . /
seem to be losing my will-to-write altogether: in spite of the fact
that I am working at an English novel — but so differently from the
way I have written before!

I spend much more time painting — have already done three , nearly
four , fairly large pictures . I wonder what you'll say to them when
you'll see them . Painting is more fun than writing , much more of a
game , and costs the soul far , far less.

I enclose a cross letter from Curtis Brown's foreign clerk . 1 have
answered that I don't believe you have made any legal agreement whatso¬
ever with Insel Verlag. Have you? Do let me know . It is rather a
bore , the high-handed way old Kippenberg behaves , as if he
were the great Chan of publishers. I should like to get a bit of a
slap at him .

It's very nice that Alfred is being feasted and rejoiced over . Con¬
gratulate him for me. It is nice to have a bit of grateful recognition ,
whatever one may say .

I am going to make another effort to get the two downstairs rooms
with the big terrace , so you could have them as a little apartment when
you come . They would be so nice .

They keep deferring the production of “David” — no doubt they are
frightened of it. I believe they hated “The Widowing of Mrs.
Holroyd.” Now they say “David” will probably be April9 but I

[ 205 ]

. "Not I, But the Wind . . ” .

don't mind, because Fd much rather stay here till the sun warms up
a bit in the north. . . . One gets sick of winter . . . though it is
a lovely day today.

Auf Wiedersehen then,

D. H. L.

[206]

Going Back to Europe

Villa Mirenda
Florence

Wednesday evening
Dear Mother-in- Law:

Frieda and I arrived at the same moment at the station in Milan ,
the two trains at the same time , and the two porters brought us together
in two minutes. Wasn’t that clever?

We have just entered the Villa Mirenda , all good and lovely here!
friends with flowers , and the peasants all there to welcome us, very
nice and friendly. Now we have eaten and sit by the fire for an hour ,
then to bed .

Frieda is happy to be back, goes about and looks at everything. Nice
is the tie. I must look at the colour in the daytime. I’m so glad you’re
well. I’m coming in the spring and we’ll eat strawberries and cream,
shan’t we?

Such lovely primulas and violets on the table under the lamp. Good
night then.

D. H. L.

Friends are going to Florence tomorrow and will put this letter in
the post. I want you to know that we arrived safely.

(Translated from the German)

[207]

Not I, But the Wind

Villa Mirenda
Scandicci
Florence
14 April, 1927

My dear Mother-in-Law:

I am home again — I returned Monday evening from Volterra. I
had a very beautiful week with Brewster. We went to Cerveteri,
Tarquinia, and Vulci, Grosseto and Volterra , not far from the sea ,
north of Rome. The Etruscan tombs are very interesting and so nice
and lovable. They were a living, fresh, jolly people, lived their own
lives without wanting to dominate the lives of others. I am fond of
my Etruscans — they had life in themselves, so they had no need to
govern others. I want to write some sketches of these Etruscan places ,
not scientifically, but only as they are now and the impression they make.

I found Frieda with a cold and a little depressed, but she is well
again and herself once more. Bar by came Tuesday with Mrs. Seaman —
she is nice, older than last year, not so beautiful, tall as a telegraph
pole, quieter, not much life in her. That is London over one. She will
stay here three weeks. She works well in her school and really wants
to be free, but it will take another year and a half at least. But it is
better that she works. If she had much money and were quite free, it
would be worse. Oh, liberty, liberty, what have you done for poor
woman! But they must go on to spread their bread of life with that
poison, poison of liberty.

The weather, thank God, is always lovely. There are still tulips
in the corn and apple and peach blossoms. The peasants are faithful
and nice. The house is still. It is good to be here. Frieda has gone to
Scandicci — Barby and Mrs. Seaman to Florence — so I am alone.

I am wearing the socks you knitted me, they are beautiful and exactly
the colour of my trousers, very elegant. And the ties are beautiful— I

[ 208 ]

. Going Back to Europe .

tried the speckled one at once. I am glad you are so well and your
Stift is always made more beautiful. The world goes forward, surely.

Later on, we will make plans for the summer, when and how to
come. I don't want to think of travel, it is enough. Greet Else when
you see her. Frieda has come home from Alassio with the love for her
sister all new and shiny again. Good! Greet the ladies, my friends.
When I come, we will eat Blaufelchen. There is no fish as good in
Italy.

Then farewell,

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[209]

“Not /, But the Wind .

Villa Mirenda
Scandicgi
Florence
i June, 1927

My dear Else:

Could you get me a copy of F. Weege's “ Etruskische Malerei” —
costs about twenty marks — at least , in England twenty . If the book -
seller can get me a copy9 and send it me here by registered post — else
they'll steal it — Drucksache , I shall be very glad , and will send you
the money at once , when you let me know how much it was . It is a nice
book — very — I saw it at a friend's house — and should like to have it.
I heard when I was in Tarquinia that Weege was in Florence — but
not doing any more Etruscan books .

It is very hot here , too hot — to sit in the sun for breakfast , even
before seven in the morning . One gets up early , then has a siesta in
the afternoon. Frieda is still peacefully slumbering — I have wakened
up early from mine — and not a soul is alive on all the poderi— peasants
sleeping too. The Arno valley lies hot and stilly in the suny but there
is a little breezei so I shall go down and sit on the grass in a deck chair
under the fiespole tree. The nespole are just ripe — I shall climb up and
get the first today — warm — they are good like that. The big cherries
also are ripe — Giulia brings them in — very good. It seems to me
always very pleasant when it is full summer and one ceases to bother
about anythingy goes drowsy , like an insect.

We heard from friends that the performance of “David” went off
very welly and the play was well received . But the notices in the news¬
papers are very contrary. They say the play was very dully that it was
like a cinema with too much talkingy that it was boring and no drama
in it y and that it was a very great mistake for a clever man like me to
offer such a thing for the actual stage. A clever man like me doesrit

[210]

. . Going Back to Europe .

fret over what they say. If the producers made a bad film of it, that's
the producers' fault. And if the dramatic critics can only listen to
snappy talk about divorces and money, that's their fault too. They
should pray to the Lord — “ Lend thou the listening ear " and not blame
me. Anyhow , io ne mifrego! Frieda , however , was very disappointed
and downcast about it and almost refused to be comforted. We shall
hear more later.

Unless it gets sizzling hot , I suppose we shall stay here till towards
the end of July. We may do a little giro to Cortona and Arezzo and
Chiusi and Orvieto , coming back by Assisi and Perugia: if it's not too
hot. Then for August we can go to Baden to the Schwiegermutter —
that hot and tiresome month , when everybody in the whole world is
somewhere where they shouldn't be. Did you say you were going to
the Haute Savoie? That'll be very nice — I have got some friends
gone there just now. If it weren't the wrong time of year, a bit too
warm for you — I should suggest you bring the children here and make
use of this fiat while we are away , and the young ones could explore
Florence and all this countryside , which is very nice. They'd like it —
but you would probably rather be cooler and quite free from housekeeping .

The Brett has gone back to the ranch , and is frantic because we don't
go too. Mabel also writes urgingly. She has built two or three more
houses and keeps one for us. But this summer anyhow we shan't go.
I should like to see Bavaria again: and September should be lovely .
If we went there any earlier , uie would stay at that inn in Beurberg ,
where we began our career , at the end of May , fifteen years ago. 1
liked Beurberg so much. But now in summer I suppose the inn is
crammed full.

I had notice from Curtis Brown today they had received ten pounds
for “ The Woman Who Rode Away." As soon as it appears , in the
“Dial" or the “ London Mercury ," either in the June number or the
3u{y> I forget — I'll send you “ The Man Who Loved Islands." I
believe you'd like that , and it might amuse you to translate.

[211 ]

p

. “Mot I, But the Wind . . ” .

Welly it's not often I write such a long letter , nowadays . The days
go by, and we hardly see anybody — which is what I prefer . Frieda
grumbles sometimes, but when people come she doesrit want them . She
has an idea she is a social soul who loves her fellowmen to distraction .
I don't see it quite . But I suppose one idea of one's self is as good as
another.

Remember me to the children, and to Alfred — and tante belle cose.

D. H. L.

[212]

Going Back to Europe

.Villa Mirenda
Scandicci
Florence
ii July, 1927

My dear Mother-in-Law:

Tour son-in-law is a poor wretch and is in bed again with bronchitis
and hcemorrhage . We have the best doctor in Florence , Giglioli — he gives
me coagulin but I am still in the corner . It is not dangerous , but . . .

And you , how are you? You are not taking any sea-baths? The
doctor says my hcemorrhage comes from sea-bathing that I took in Forte .

And does it amuse you , your Konstanz? We were there at the
Walthaus Jakob for supper , the time Mountsier was with us, do you
remember? It was lovely . But aren't you a little lost and homeless
there? Or are you always getting younger and are you shingling your
hair and cutting your skirt short? You can never know what a woman
will do in her green seventy-sixth year.

Friends are very good. Every day somebody comes from Florence. Pvebeen
only five days in bed and in a fortnight I can go away to that W dr ter see,
but we don't know where it is yet — Emil should write. The doctor says
I ought to go into the pines — eight hundred metres, no higher.

If only once I were well again!

I send you only two pounds for your birthday , since I am to bring
the rest myself when we come for the feast. Else must write to us.
Many thanks to her for her letters . I borrowed the book in London.
But the Etruscan and all work can sleep with the devil, if only I
get well again. I will enjoy myself and forget everything. You, be
content, and take the joys of this earth peacefully.

We are coming soon and will eat the Baden sausages together.

(Translated from the German) D. H. L.

[213]

1 Not I) But the Wind .

Irschenhausen
Post Ebenhausen
Munich

12 September, 1927
My dear Mother-in- Law:

We had the little parcel today . But why did you spend so much
money? You ought not to do it . The handkerchiefs are really
charming . I like them very much , and the pralines are for princes ,
we've only eaten two rows . Good there was also a little sausage — bread
is the staff of life but with a little sausage it also becomes an umbrella .

You are lonely , I know it , quite forlorn , with three daughters
running all over the world . But now you'll be content again , Nusch
is with you .

went this morning to sleep in Augsburg — God knows why —
but we were very happy together , what with “ patience " and embroidery
and walks — what a pity she is gone!

The weather is cold and it rains — Nusctis barometer still makes
a bad , grinning foreboding face in the room . Z?z// in the lsartal still
hangs a gay-coloured rag of rainbow , the Lord still keeps his promise •
haven't heard from Bar by — I think she will come here direct
perhaps Saturday . writes so nicely and sends me thirty bottles

of malt-beer . Think what drunkards we shall become , arriving in
Baden with red noses and watery eyes.

It is really a pity we can't stay together longer , with JVusch and Else
and you. Always this stupid going away. But soon we shall see you,
so farewell.

D. H. L.

It is evening , the clouds are gold9 the mountains stand there with
slow white pillows of steam .

(Translated from the German)

[214]

Going Back to Europe

Saturday morning
Dear Else:

So nice of you to send all those toilet things , and the money — but
why didn't you keep the money to pay for them? Let me know how
much they cost.

The “ Jugend " man came — a nice little soul after all — but they'll
do him in — he'll never stand the modern mill. And the Kahlers came —
both very nice — but like all people of that class nowadays , they have lost
their raison d'etre , and there seems no reason whatever why they should
exist — they haven't even> like the Nachbarin , the poignancy of woes .

A rainy morning and a cold wind.

Barby arrives in Miinchen at 10:40 tonight — so Frieda will go in
by a late train , and they'll come out tomorrow morning. We've promised
to go to the Kahlers ' tomorrow to tea.

Did you get the book I sent? — The “ Jugend " man wants only a
short — short story— four Schreibmaschineseiten: that's about two
thousand words. No stories are as short as that — usually five thousand .
I must try and hunt something up.

Hope all is well in Heidelberg . Greet everybody.

D. H. L.

This swanky paper comes from Fr. Hauselmaier — or however she
is called .

[215]

'Not 7, But the Wind .

Irschenhausen

ISARTAL

Wednesday

29 September, 1927

My dear Mother-in-Law:

Else writes Nusch is still there . Nay Johanna , you Easter -lamb y
don't you sacrifice yourself yet on the altar of marriage . Wait then till
Tuesday , when we are coming. We take the twelve o'clock train and
arrive at seven in Badeny is that rigkt, mother-in-law? And we go to the
Augustabad, where the Blaufelchen is so good. It has turned much
colder tonight — we've both had colds . Sunday was a horror of darkness
and rain but we went out and got wet . But we are better. Anna is here
and looks after us well. Barby is already in London. I can hardly
believe she has been here . Eve nearly drunk all the beer Emil senty a
record for Munichy no? Yesterday we went to see Frau Leitnery so nice
and small , but what chatter. She sends you all her greetings.

The beeches begin to turn yellow and today we gathered some violets
under the balcony — they smell sweet like spring and the flowers are still
wonderful. Kahlers come tomorrow and Max Mohry the dramatist , is to
come from Tegemsee. Then , you , mother-in-law , and I hope you tooy
Nusch — will meet us on Tuesday and everything can be told then.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[216]

Irschenhausen

Sunday

Going Back to Europe

My dear Else:

Many thanks for the pen, which I am so glad to have in my fingers
again — if s an old friend : it wrote “ Boy in the Bush '' and “St.
Mawr” and “ Princess ” and “ Woman Who Rode Away” and “Plumed
Serpent '' and all the stories in between: not bad, even if it is a nasty
orangy brown colour . But Pve got even to like this colour. They seem to
have mended it all right , it goes well.

This is the horridest day of all, after tea and still pouring with rain:
and I would like to go out! If only I had strong boots and a rain-proof.
I would of course if we were staying. — Yesterday was lovely and sunny till
teatime .

This weekend we are alone — Anna is coming tomorrow. Then I
suppose the Meyers will come and the Kahlers — and Pve promised to go
to Schoenberner's, and to meet Hans Carossa there. I heard from
England that a man who writes plays and thinks I am the greatest living
novelist {quote) and who lives in Tegernsee, may come and see me:
Max Mohr: do you know anything about him? I don't.

I began the little bag — with green grass waves and dandelion seed-
stones— you know , the fluffy balls — and it's going to have bees. But
today is so dark and the stuff is so black! But it will be rather d small

I suppose we shall stay here till Monday week — is that December
2nd? I don't feel a bit anxious to return to Italy — but I think Frieda
does. I don't mind, for the time being, if it rains and is dark. — By the
way, you should see how pretty your garden looks , with the gold, and the
mauve of the Michaelmas daisies, and the big autumn daisy, and the pink
phlox: it looks really gay, on a sunny day. — We have gathered the
apples — so bright and red — and the last two hazel-nuts. Pm afraid either

[217]

. “ Not /, But the Wind . . ” .

squirrels or children had fetched the others . The woods are simply
populated with mushrooms9 all sorts , in weird camps everywhere — really
like strange inhabitants come in . We eat the little yellow ones , and keep
picking Steinpilze and throwing them away again . The cows come every
afternoon on to our grass9 with a terrific tintinnabulation , like a host of
tinkling Sundays . There is a Jersey who is pining to come to tea in the
porch — and a white calf that suddenly goes round the moon . Frieda reads
Goethe , and I play patience — today I have finished my “Cavalleria
Rusticana" translation: now Vve only to do the introduction: if that fool
of a young postman hasn't lost my bookful of MS. that I sent to England .
Frieda told him loudly registered; he says he sent it unregistered — and
Drucksache. I shall curse him if I have to do it all over again.

It's nightfall — I think I shall go out , spite of rainyfor a few minutes .

Wiedersehen!

D. H. L.

[218]

Going Back to Europe

Hotel Eden
Baden-Baden
Friday

My dear Else:

You also have a birthday , but it seems to me one must be four or
eighty to have important birthdays . Of the number we won't speak .

I had your letter . Yes , we saw Hans Carossa , a nice man , miW like
mashed potatoes . //e listened to my lung passages , fo could not hear
my lungs , /fonfo fo healed, only the bronchi , anrf doctors

are not interested in bronchi. But he says not to take more inhalations
with hot air: it might bring the hemorrhage back. The journey was
vile , many people , much dust , arcrf / had a cold. But it is better. We are
very grand here , two rooms , a bath , and the food very good.

Yesterday it was goose , Michaelmas goose; I can eat better but they
bring so much , wagonloads of potatoes , anrf fog or carpets , and

how the people feed! It takes my shy appetite away a bit.

The mother-in-law grows younger and younger. We must go back
like this on her next birthday: 66 next time , then 55 years. It is thus with
old age , the only real youth without trouble , after seventy.

Max Mohr came in a car from Tegernsee , where he has a pleasant
house — with wife and child — a man thirty-six years old or so.

He wants to be a child of nature but we were disappointed in the
nature. But he is good and interesting , but a last man who has arrived
at the last end of the road \ who can no longer go ahead in the wilderness
nor take a step into the unknown. So he is very unhappy , is a doctor ,
prisoner of war in England , and his psychology a little like Hadu's.
We have his plays , we send them to you.

When are you coming? Come this weekend. We stay till the
seventeenth. We are very fortunate here , but the world seems
dark to me again. That scares me and I want to go south.

[219]

JJ

. • . “Not I, But the Wind

I send you the story — too long for “ Jugend ” — but you might sell it
somewhere else. Would not “ Tickets Please ” anrf “England, My
England " be just right for “Jugend"? Have you got them? The piece
about the dog I can’t find. But come and we can talk it all over. Are
Friedel and Marianne there? Greet Alfred and them.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German'!

[ 220 ]

Going Back to Europe

Villa Mirenda

Scandicci

Firenze

14 November, 1927
Dear Else:

Many thanks for the Beethoven letters — arrived today — not a literary
man — and always in love with somebody — or thought he was —
and in the flesh wasn't . But how German! — I mean the way he really
wasn’t.

Frau Katherina Kippenberg wrote they want to publish one of
my books next year, and asks which I would suggest. I think I shall
suggest, “ Woman Who Rode Away," and “ The Princess " ( from
the English “St. Mawr ”) and a third story you haven't yet seen ,
“None of That." They'd make a smallish volume. Or would you
suggest one of the novels? “The Lost Girl" or “Aaron's Rod."
I don't care. Only we'U keep back “The Plumed Serpent," and
offer it ready translated to another firm, for 1929. Do you think that's
wise?

It has rained a bit here, but is sunny again — we're just going out
for a walk — the country is full of colour, vines yellow, olives blue ,
pines very green. It is Monday, so the fusillade of cacciatori shooting
little birds is quieter — it makes me so mad — I am really quite a lot
better — cough much less, especially in the morning — but haven't
yet been to Firenze — think we'll go Thursday . There's a queer sort
of unease in the air — as if the wrong sort of spirits were flying abroad
in the unseen ether — but it may be my imagination . Frieda strums
away on her piano, and I have to listen for when she hits a wrong note. —
I am dabbing at poems , getting them ready for the “Collected
Poems."

Alfred wrote very nicely from Ascona. I hope we'll see you here

[221 j

. “Wot I, But the Wind . . .

in the early spring: if we are here: I feel sort of uncertain and un¬
stuck. I hope you're having more conferences and so on, if they amuse
you. As for me, I play “ patience " — and it hardly ever comes
out. Love!

D. H. L.

[ 222 ]

Going Back to Europe

Villa Mirenda

SCANDICCI

Florence

i 6 November, 1927
My dear Mother -in-Law:

This time I want you to do something for me: our neighbour at the
ranch , Rachel Hawk , want toys for the children . She wants two boxes — a
farmyard and a village , not too small , to cost five marks . The people in
the shop can send it direct: Mrs . Rachel Hawk , Del Monte Ranch ,
Qyesta , Mexico. And in the shop buy also animals and trees and
men , .57^*2// possible , a/w chickens , and little houses and carts and so
forth for my niece Joan and my nephew Bertie , for about ten marks .
They can be sent straight from the shop to my sister Emily .

1 send you two pounds , that will be enough. You like doing it, yes?
In the shop on the Augustplatz , where the large autos stand .

How are you? We are well . It has turned cold , but sun all day
today. I was on the top of the hill , / mo; Florence , there in the

sunshine , m /zg/tf and clear , lilytown.

Tomorrow we are going for lunch with Reggie; the first time I shall go
to town since we came back. If it is fine like today Til go with pleasure .

We are both busy — I am writing stories and am typing all my poems ,
they are to be collected in one volume. Frieda has finished her jacket , very
pretty, from the violet velvet Nusch gave her. It is really pretty, a short
jacket with silver buttons, quite Florentine Renaissance.

In the evening we have a fire in the stove. The day is warm , the sun
streams into the room. But the evenings are cold.

Max Mohr writes always very nicely and will come to see us in
January. Perhaps we shall go to Cortina, we are not going to Egypt.
But if we both keep well, we shall stay in our own house.

I always have a “ patience ” in the evening and I think the mother-in-

[223]

. “Not I, But the Wind . . .

law has a game at this same hour. Tours comes better than Else's . If
your little one is called the demon , then Else's ought to be called “devil.'*

Else sent me Beethoven's letters. But what a cut-off man! He could
not come near to anybody: and his house, what untidyness, what a mad
show! The poor, great man! Thank the Lord, I am still small enough
to mend my socks and wash my cup.

Frieda has written to you: the letter lies about these last two days, half
finished. Tou will get it finally, when it arrives.

I greet you, mire Iternelle ! A pity we can't send you our roses, they are
so lovely.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[224]

Going Back to Europe

Villa Mirenda

Sgandicci

Firenze

12 December, 1927
Dear Else :

I can't help laughing at the end of Frau Katherina's letter — gets quite
snappy . However , that's that . I suppose by “ Holy Ghosts" (imagine
daring to pluralize it!) she means “ Glad Ghosts." I sent you a copy last
year — didn't I? — little yellow book. I don't mind what they put in a
volume. — 1 suggested “ Woman Who Rode Away" and “ Princess " arid
“ None of That" — all more or less Mexican. But let her put in “ Glad
Ghosts" if she likes . Anyhow we have got her hipped. Don't suddenly
go and say you don't want to translate the things — or haven't time, or
something— just when I've got it into order. It would be just like you.

Very grey and misty and unsatisfactory here. I am in bed , as the best
place out of it all. But I'm all right — cough a nuisance stilly but
nothing extra. I'd get up if the sun would shine. Anyhow I'll get up this
afternoon.

I'm writing my “ Lady Chatterley" novel over again. It's very
“ shocking " — the Schwiegermutter must never see it. — I think I shall
publish it privately here in Florence.

We are staying here for Christmas and making a tree for the peasants.
This year there'll be at least thirty of them. Dreadful thought. But
Frieda wants it.

And we aren't sending out any Christmas presents — so pleasey Else,
don't send us anything. The post is so tiresome here, and altogether one
feels so unchristmassy. I'm sick of Jesus , and don't see at all why he
should go on being born every year. We might have somebody else born,
for a change. Toujours perdrix!

The Huxleys will be in Florence for Christmas, then going to

[ 225 ]

. . “Not I, But the Wind . . .

Diablerets. I don't want to go there , another San Moritz , where
Michael Arlen has gone. I'd have liked to go to Egypt , but the fates
seem to say no. So it’s just San Polo!

The Schwiegermutter says you are having festas in Heidelberg, so I
suppose you are wearing your best clothes and going it. Nothing like
learning, for setting people on the hop.

Anyhow 1 hope you’re having a good time, and the children too.

Love from both.

D. H. L.

[ 226]

Going Back to Europe

Villa Mirenda
Scandicci
Florence
Sunday

My dear Mother-in-Law:

Christmas is here again . I say, the poor chap has been born nearly
two thousand times , it is enough . He might really have peace now ,
and leave us in peace , without Christmas and stomach-aches . But
we sit still and only make the tree for the peasant children and they
think it is a miracle , that it really grows here in the salony and has
silver apples and golden birds : for them it is only a fairytale , nothing
Christian. You've heard how Frieda wanted to act Sancta Sanctissima ,
she's really St. Frieda , butter doesn't melt in her mouth: because y of
course y she has taken a Bandelli child to the hospital. But , thank the
Lord y the child makes trouble and Saint Frieda begins to be bored and
is becoming all-too-human again.

The Wilkinsons y our neighbours , have just been herey he with a flute
and an overcoat. Tomorrow they go to Rome for a fortnight. Thank
goodness I'm not going: there is an ice-cold wind these last two days and
Rome is an ice-cold town.

I sit here in the corner by the stove that sings quite amiably and the
world can go to blazes as far as I am concerned.

Else wrote that she will take you to Heidelberg over the holidays.
But don't you goy remain safely there y and let the mistletoe berries fall on
those that want them.

The Wilkinsons have brought me a Christmas pudding: it smells
good; I'll enjoy it. I send you a poundy you can buy such a one— yes , a
real English pudding. {Don't!)

Then farewell. Don't drink too much and dance too much and

[ 227 ] Q

. “Not I, But the Wind . . .

flirt too much , or you'll have a real moral “ morning-after and I
shan't weep with you.

Farewell , 0 Germania under the tree.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German’!

[ 228 ]

Going Back to Europe

Villa Mirenda

SCANDICCI

Wednesday

My dear Mother-in-Law:

Lo, everything is nearly normal again . The tree is still standing — we
want to relight it when the Wilkes return from Rome , perhaps Monday .
And we have the remains of the plum pudding from yesterday. Otherwise ,
as I say, we are nearly normal . Frieda has forgotten her holiness for the
moment. The boy flew away from the hospital , his padrone took him back
again and promised him a bicycle. So, the operation is doney Frieda is
going to visit him tomorrow. But now she is no longer the one and only
saint. The padrone promised Dino a bicycle and Dante, the elder
brother , says: “If somebody promises me a bicycle Til also go and be
operated on.” But, poor boy , he has no rupture.

The weather is abominable — rain and little sun — evening is the best
time, with fire and lamp and peace. Frieda is making herself an apron all
covered with roses and birds.

The tie is a great success. I wore it on Christmas day in Florence —
very nice , it's much nicer on than off. The Baden calendar lies faithfully
here , ready to carry us through another year, with all the pictures. The
last sheet of the old one hangs over the piano, a black and white scene in
the Black Forest.

Oh , dear mother-in-law, live well for another year and have a jolly ,
happy 1 928. Greet Else, I am writing to her.

Tour,

D. H. L.

The book from Friedel is pretty, really pretty.

(Translated from the German)

[229]

'Not /, But the Wind

Villa Mirenda
Scandicci
Florence
Wednesday

My dear Mother-in-Law:

I haven't said “ thank you” yet for the beautiful tie that I like so much .
Pm a brute. But now the pen has become a difficulty to me. I have
written so much in my life , I would like to be silent. But you understand.

We are well on in January and I haven't had a cold yet this winter. I
thank the Lord and pray it may go on so with me. You are also well ,
aren't you?

We are sitting still and work much , and that's healthy. People make
you tired and bring sickness. Frieda is sewing much , makes herself some
dresses and jackets and a coat , and says she is better than Paquin. All
right! Her hats grow higher and higher , like the tower of Babel ,
which was so high. In the spring you'll see a daughter such as you've
never seen before in all your life.

Now they write to me from London that “David” won't be produced
until April. I prefer it , I would rather go to England or Germany when
the winter is past and the flowers greet you. Wait a little , mother-in-law,
have a little patience , summer is the best time. We are having bad
weather , not rain but cold fog that is quite unnatural in this country.
But beautiful days in between: like Monday , when I went to the Villa
Curoniay Mabel's villa on the Poggio Imperiale, for the first time. Oh
dear , a big , beautiful villa , somewhat noble , but sad , sad as death. She
wants to pull out some books and send them to Taos. Farewell ,
mother-in-law , till we meet.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[230]

Going Back to Europe

Villa Mirenda
Scandicci
Florence
Sunday

My dear Mother-in- Law:

I have the ties , they are beautiful as Rhine gold, but why “for rainy
days"? Today I am wearing the blue and red , do you remember? I
believe it is only cotton , but you ought to see how gay and manly it looks.
We are still waiting for my novel , “ Lady Chatterley's Lover." Only
half has been printed — all goes slowly. But I hope in a fortnight it will
be ready — at least printed.

It's just as well we aren't in Switzerland yet, the wind comes cold and
the snow lies deep on the hills opposite. Today was a wonderful day but
no warmer than a sunny winter s day. I don't want to be in the snow
again , as at Diablerets. We are looking for an inn in Switzerland. In
the hotels sit thousands of English spinsters and they bore me. In an inn ,
life is more natural. Barby writes there is a good inn at Talloire , near
Annecy where Nusch was, but it is in Switzerland. Ask Nusch about it.
Frieda can go to Baden when she likes, but I think it would be stupid for
only five or six days and then off again. What a pity we can't both come
while Nusch is there! But for me everybody says: “ Switzerland 7
Switzerland!" — so I, poor beast, have to go. But later in the summer
I'm coming to Baden .

Frieda is still sewing clothes. The two girls , Giulia and Teresina,
come in the evenings and the three sew and talk together in the dining¬
room, but I sit alone here in the salotto, too many females for me.

The spring vegetables are here already — asparagus, sweet young peas ,
broad beans , and during the last three weeks new potatoes find many
artichokes . It is always a good moment in Italy when the vegetables come.
For fruit we have nespole, the yellow Japanese misplein, and the first

[231 ]

JJ

. “Not I, But the Wind

cherries , a/AtrA are not really sweet . Everything is late this year and
many , many twj* Jw/ not happy ones . fall off in a day because the

undersoil is still too dry , the rain has not yet gone deep down.

You remember Zaira^ the mistress of the major here , and the big white
dog Titi? Well9 Titi has bitten Za^s arm badly and has had to be
shot , and poor Zaifa must stay at home , there in Florence^ till the doctor is
sure that it isn9t hydrophobia . Frieda says : another of my enemies
fallen — she means Titi .

Poor A ... H . . . — she was so nice but seemed so small and lost
here in Italy . And poor Frau H . . . — really ill. I hope they are all
right again in Baden. Don9 1 you go travelling to Spain or Sweden^
mother-in-law — old ladies should stay in their own home-town . Then
farewell to you two — we9ll meet again before long.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[232]

Going Back to Europe

Villa Mirenda
Scandicci
Florence
Thursday

My dear Mother-in- Law:

We had a good journey, few people , no difficulties , and I was not very
tired . I never saw Switzerland so lovely : a still grey autumn day, grass so
strangely green, nearly like fire : and then the fruit trees, all delicate
flames , the cherry trees absolutely red like cherries , apple trees and pear
trees yellow red scarlet and still as flowers: really like a fairyland . It has
rained in Italy . But today there is gentle sun and clouds, warm air and a
great stillness . The neighbours were at the station with the car, all so
friendly . And here the peasants all ranged on the “ aia ” — Giulia
radiant, she is getting quite pretty; she had the fires ready and hot water
and we are here . But the house seemed foreign to me, naked and empty ,
and a bit uncanny, as if I had never known it, but Frieda is happy .

I don't know what it is with me, I don't feel at home in Italy, this
time . In your little vase are roses and jasmine. My pictures please me —
and I listen , listen to the stillness . But now we go to the neighbours .
Take our small presents . Already your letter was here this morning .
What a pity that distance remains distance, so absolutely . If we could
come for tea to you, we would all three be happy. But we will come
nearer to live, near you.

Auf Wiedersehen, be happy.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[233]

."Not I, But the Wind .

Villa Mirenda
Scandicci
Florence
Monday

My dear Mother-in-Law:

I am glad you had such a beautiful trip to Herrenalp . Are you glad to
come home or would you have liked to stay longer?

We arrive about the thirteenth . We leave next Monday the twelfth for
Milan , and on Tuesday the thirteenth from Milan to Baden-Baden .
We arrive at 6:45 in the evening . Can you find us one or two rooms in a
villa or a hotel , that we can eat where we want to? And then , after a few
days , we can go again to Herrenalp with you , or stay in Baden or
somewhere in the neighbourhood .

We promised to be in England all the month of August . But that
leaves us about twenty days in Germany . It will be lovely .

lam always fond of Baden and the Black Forest , and always feel well
there . It will be splendid summer , and the strawberries and cherries
won't be over yet.

We can eat at the Wald Kaffee, drink tea there , and visit Excellent
Stotzer in her wooden house and make excursions. Yes , it will be lovely .
Frieda also is happy to come, really. Don't be sad.

It is wonderful here , so warm and still. The fruit is already ripe: figs ,
peaches , apricots , plums , all big and fine, because it rained so much — the
apricots are marvellous , really as big as peaches , and the first little
pears are so sweet and pale yellow. Yes , it is full summer.

My sisters write sadly because of the strike: there is no end to it and
both are losing much money. One must not make one's life out of money ,
if money disappears the life is broken. With or without money I have had
my life for myself and am not swindled.

[234]

. Going Back to Europe .

Friedel wrote nicely from Berlin but I think he has had enough of a big
town and wants to go home .

Else must tell me how she likes the play .

They are already translating “ The Plumed Serpent” into Swedish but
I only get six hundred marks .

I send you a little money for your birthday , that you may buy what you
like .

We won't bring you any presents , they are such a nuisance.

Then , mother-in-law, soon we'll meet.

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[235]

.“Not I, But the Wind .

Villa Mirenda
Scandicgi
Florence
Sunday

My dear Mother -in-Law:

This is already another Sunday , and the third that we are here. The
weather is always like summery so warm and clear , the windows are open
all day and we don't dream of having a fire: the evenings also are quite
warm. The roses are in bloomy but there are few JlowerSy all is still too
dry, little water even in the wells. Also Baden will be lovely just now .
On Sundays I must always think of the music in the “ Kurpark " and of
the “ Malzbier " in your room . Here there is no music , the stupid hunters
shoot the sparrows and nightingales in the woods behind, you always hear
it go “pop" — Malzbier there isn't either , and your room is not just five
minutes from here. But you will be going for a walk at this moment and
you will be meeting all the ladies from the Stift in their Sunday clothes
returning from Mass.

Nusch has written — says she sees many people , and goes out a lot. She
wants to come here in March. Alfred also has written from Ascona —
quite charmed by the paradisial days there: a charming letter. Frieda has
a piano again , now she wants to play Handel , the “Messiah," but she
hasn't arrived at the Alleluia! I am painting a picture , not very big , of a
tiger who springs on a man: such a grinning tiger. Tomorrow we are
going to Florence with friends. I haven't been to town yet. We play cards
with the neighbours , solo-whist and Pope John and also “patience"
You know , your little “patience" — the one-two-three — the one that is
called the demon, may well be called so, with me it never comes right.

Greet Frau Kugler, also the Halms. I hope that Frau Oberin is better .
You keep jolly; you must ask the cards if in January we are going to
Cortina. “0 dear cards, tell me truly . . ."

[236]

D. H. L.

Les Diablerets
Thursday morning

Going Back to Europe

[To Frieda]

No letter from you this morning — only one letter from Curtis Brown,
asking for the “Lady CP MS. — But I am still waiting for the final two
chapters from that woman.

A warm morning , with warm dimmish sun. Our maid got the grippe ,
so her sister is here.

Pm just going down to the station with Aldous. Diablerets coming
to an end for us. I do hope we shan't get gripped going down to the
valley. — How do you feel it?

Love to die Alte.

D. H. L.

[237]

4JVb/ /, But the Wind .

Chalet Beau Site
Les Diablerets
Vaud
Tuesday

Dear Else:

We'll just go ahead with “Rex” without bothering about Curtis
Brown . I'll just mention it to him when I write , and tell him I fixed
things up myself I think M. 180 is quite a good price for “ Jugend ”
to pay: and the usual arrangement is one third to the translator , two
thirds to the author — so you get M. 60. Business , car a mia , business!

I wrote Seeker direct and asked him to send you and to Frau Katherina
bothy copies of the “Princess” ( in “St. Mawr”) and proofs of the
volume of short stories “The Woman Who Rode Away.” I hope you
will get these directly. In the stories , the end of “The Border Line” is
missing — printer lost two or three pages: so I'm having to write it in.
But you'll understand the story is unfinished . It's “None of That” I
want you to consider.

We had hot sunshiney and the snow was melting: but now today
it is snowing again , a fine and crumbling snow. I must sayy I don't
like it. I am no snow-bird , I hate the stark and shroudy whiteness ,
white and black. It offends the painter in one — it is so uniform — only
sometimes lovely contours , and pale blue gleams. But against life .

I've been busy doing my poems — have at last got all the early poems
together and complete. What a sweat! But I shall publish the others9
“Look!” and “Birds and Beasts” as they stand. Then I'll have
to go through the novel , which I'm having typed in London. How
glad I'll be when all this work is behind me , and I needn't give a
damn any more. I'm sick to death of literature.

I think this place is a good tonic , but snow isn't good for
bronchials: it just isn't: it scrapes inside.

[238]

. Going Back to Europe .

I dreamt of Frau v. Kahler last night . Are they all right?

That was such a good p.c. of Irschenhausen.

F. waiting to take the letter — so Wiedersehen!

D. H. L.

1239]

■‘Not /, But the Wind .

Firenze

i 6 April 28

Saturday

[To Else]

Had your note from Alassio — glad you liked it there. I wonder if you
are setting off today for Germany. I stayed the night in Florence at
Orioli's, but came back to Mirenda this afternoon. There is an atmo¬
sphere of departure and departure, which is a bit ecceurant. I wish we
were safely away, with no good-byes to say. — We shall meet some time
during the summer somewhere nice and free and forgetful. Italy has too
many memories, not enough spunk.

I shall send your Filllfeder, which I just discovered.

D. H. L.

[240]

Going Back to Europe

Villa Mirenda
Sgandiggi
Florence
4 May 1928

Dear Else:

I simply can't write biographical facts about myself Will you answer
this Billow man, if you feel like it: and if you think it is worth while . /
have never heard of him . 1 must ask Curtis Brown if they have arranged
with him about “Islands”

You have heard by now that we are keeping on the Mirenda . I took
down the pictures and we began to pack: but Frieda became so gloomy
that I hung the pictures up again and paid six month ' rent. Not worth
while getting into a state about . So here we are , just the same. And
probably we shall stay till the end of the month , as the proofs of the novel
are still only half done. I wish the printer would hurry up.

Iam asking people if they know of a niceGasthaus in Switzerland, for
me. I hate hotel-pensions, after a few days. I always want to kill the old
women — usually English — that come into meals like cats. We just had a
very handsome Louis XV sort of a one to tea — but American this time —
and of course I'm bristling in every hair.

It is more or less summer too — the Kastanien in full flower— is yours
too? The Bandelli peasants just brought us the first baccelli — Saubohnen
— which are tiny, and they eat them raw, and think them wonderful . I
like them because il baccello is one of the improper words . We also eat
green almonds boiled in sugar and water, like plums — and they taste like
gooseberries . We went to see an old Englishwoman — not so very old —
who has a very elegant flat on the Lungarno and was a cocotte — the
expensive sort — but a real one . I must say , I find her very restful and
smooth, after some of the others .

Au revoir — tante cosa! D. H. L.

[241 ]

'Not I, But the Wind .

Villa Mirenda
Scandicci
Firenze
Friday

Dear Else:

I will send this to Baden — perhaps you will still be there . You will
have had a lovely sunny week: here the sun is too hot , makes one tired, and
feels like earthquakes . Still, it is beautiful .

We got home safely with all the spoil — there are roses in the Wolf
ratshauser glass you gave me, here on the table — and we drank the
Kirsch from the little yellow glasses when the Wilkinsons were here
yesterday . I am much better , I eat more joyfully, and take the Brustthee .
Imagine , one must let it boil slowly for hours . I do believe it is good,
better than all the medicines. I am already doing a story, and dabbing at
my picture of five Negresses — called " The Finding of Moses,” or, if the
Schwiegermutter had to name it, " ein fiirchterliches Schauerstiick” A la
bonne heure .

I had a letter from Curtis Brown, saying that next year, in November,
our contract with Kippenberg comes to an end, and then we can leave him
and go to a different publisher. Also that he, Kip, said in a letter of 1923
that he would gladly agree that you should do the translations . Curtis
Brown's have the letter. Now 1 have written Kippenberg to ask him
what exactly he intends to do next year, with regard to my work. We'll
see if we can't have our own way in this matter, and you shall translate
" The Plumed Serpent,” if you wish, trotz Anton, trotz Katherina.
Vogue la galire!

Dark falling. We haven't made any fire in the stove yet — it is so
warm. Hope you are feeling well and easy. Love to the Schwiegermutter
— the Schlips came today — but I shan't wear it yet. Say thanks for me.

Love ,

[242]

D. H. L.

Going Back to Europe

Villa Mirenda
Sgandicci
Firenze
Montag

Liebe Else:

You wrote me so nicely from Constance . — Pm glad you had a
good time with the Schwiegermutter . I can so well understand she
didn't want to see her old home. It's too upsetting: the past is so far
Off.

I am better — getting up again , and going about the house — but
feeling feeble. I went downstairs and out of doors a few yards yester¬
day — but it's too hot to go out till sundown. However , this day week —
or tomorrow week — I hope we can leave for Villach. I shall feel
better a little higher. It's lovely weather here, sunny , and not too
hot at all if one keeps quiet . But it's much too hot to walk in the sun.
If I was well , I should enjoy it. Frieda for the first time really likes the
heat. But now I feel I should like to see the world green, and hear the
waters running: and to taste good northern food.

I almost wish we'd arranged with you to rent Irschenhausen for
August tooy and gone straight there. But it will be nice to see Nusch
too — and as you sayy if one can really be amusedy that is the chief
thing. My illnesses 1 know come from chagrin — chagrin that goes
deep in and comes afterwards in haemorrhage or what not .
When one learns , also, not to be chagrined , then one can become like
your Bur germeister — was he a Biirgermeister?—fat and lustig, to the
age of eighty. Anyhow I'd be glad to be fat and lustig once before
I die: even a bit versojfen , if that's a way of not having a sore chest.

I wonder if the “ revolution ” in Vienna , which the papery report ,
amounts to anything? Probably not. I think if we didn't go to Austria
we'd go to Bavaria, or somewhere high in Baden.

[243]

B.

99

. “Not I, But the Wind

We shall see you then in September. It is good of you to let us have the
Irschenhausen house — but I must pay you a rent.

Wiedersehen!

D. H. L.

I sent you a “Dial” with a story in it — don’t know if you’ll like it.

[244 ]

Going Back to Europe

Kesselmatte
Gsteio b Gstaad
Schweiz

ii September 1928
My dear Mother-in-Law:

I have your letter and the tie , a nice one . Yes, we're coming soon .
Else comes here Saturday the fifteenth and stays till Sunday .

It's wonderfully still here since my sister and niece went . They left
Friday . They were jolly here but my sister is a little sad — the husband is
nothing .

We have had summer days but today is autumn. The clouds turn
round and round the tops of the mountains , still and grey and low, so still
it is frightening. In these mountains one needs the sun. It will be nice in
Baden, when the Brewsters are also there and we can go to concerts and
theatres together.

We eat pounds of grapes. Frieda makes a diet of grapes, juniper
berries, and God knows what. Do you hear nothing from Nusch?
Farewell and soon ,

Auf Wiedersehen ,

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[245]

‘ Not J, But the Wind .

La Vigie

Ile de Port-Cros

Var

Saturday
Dear Else:

Tour letter today , saying the Schwiegermutter is in bed . I'm awfully
sorry and do hope it's not much. I thought in Lichtental she wasn't well .
Of course, she is a heavy woman , and her legs are sure to suffer . Let us
know how she goes on — and I hope she'll soon be up and about.

We are here settled in. But Frieda arrived in Lavandou with that
fatal Italian grippe , and of course I took it. I felt ill all last week , and
have been in bed all this , with a very raked chest. Sickening! — The
others are very nice and very kind. The Vigie isn't a castle at all— just a
low thick defence-wall with loop-holes , enclosing the top of the hill —
about as big as the Leopoldplatz — and the inside all wild , grown with
lavender and arbutus and little pine trees , and with a few rooms built
against the inside of the wall. It's quite pleasant , and comfortable , and
we have big fires of pine logs in the open fires. Giuseppe is a strong fellow
of twenty-eight , Sicilian . He fetches and carries and washes all dishes
and makes fires. The women only cook, and they do it in turns. Joseph
brings the food from the boat on a small donkey , Jasper — and we get
abundance. The ship comes nearly every day — but the post only three
times a week. The climate is very warm — warm and moist. I am afraid
that doesn't suit me very well. I don't know how long we shall stay. I
have promised \ till December 15 or 20. But if the warm-moist is bad for
my cough , we shall leave soon. The others are really very nice and kind \ it
will be a pity if we have to leave them. And where shall we go?

The Brewsters are back in Capri. Inevitable.

I ordered the poems to Heidelberg. They look very nice.

We are on the top of the island , and look down on green pine-tops , down

[246]

. Going Back to Europe .

to the blue sea , and the other islands and the mainland . Since I came I
have not been down to the sea again — and Frieda has bathed only once.
But it is very pretty. And at night the lights Jlash at Toulon and Hyires
and Lavandou . — But I really don't like islands , I would never stay long
on one. Frieda wants to go back to Lago di Garda . Vediamo! I am in
abeyance.

Write and tell us how the Schwiegermutter is. Frieda says she feels
worried — but it seems to me there is no danger , only it is painful and
depressing. No peace on this earth.

Love from both.

D. H. L.

I hope this letter will leave the island before next Tuesday — the next
mail.

[247]

. “Not /, But the Wind .

Port-Cros

Friday

Such storms , such wind , such torrents of rain! And the Vigie ,
although quite hygienic, is not very comfortable. So we are all
leaving next week — Tuesday or Thursday , as the sea permits . I think
Frieda and I will stay in Bandol , on the big railway .
jo glad the Schwiegermutter is better.

Will write next week.

D. H. L.

[248]

Going Back to Europe

Ile de Port-Cros
Var

Wednesday

My dear Mother-in-Law:

I am glad you are better . You have been too brave. You know, you are
heavy on your feet now, you are no longer a young, light thing. You must
not walk so far. I remember with grief the “ Fisch Kultur," a mad
excursion and you insisted doing it. No, no, you must go gently and
wisely. To force things is not for you.

Tomorrow we leave here. Thank the Lord, the weather is good, blue
sky, blue quiet sea, and so warm. But I have enough. I would never like
to stay more than a month on a little island. But as an experience it was
nice. I think we will only go as far as Bandol, a little place on the coast,
half an hour from Toulon. But there we are on the main line, and only an
hour from Marseille. And we can think where we really want a house —
neither of us knows what we want .

They write from Florence it rains and rains and rains; awful. Thank
God, we aren't there. My book of stories came with the Inselalmanach
and Moricke. You know I have not broken with Insel? They pay me
fifty pounds instead of thirty five and Else can translate when she wants
to. That's good.

I send you five pounds, if you want more tell me. It is my money and I
give it you with pleasure, but please pay the ten marks for Frieda's dress.

The Brewsters are in Capri again. They say it is the best place in the
world. Good, when you know it!

Keep still and quiet inside yourself , then your legs will go without pain .

D. H. L,

(Translated from the German)

[249]

.“j Hot I, But the Wind .

H6tel Beau Rivage
Bandol, Var
19 December, 1928

My dear Mother-in-Law:

This evening the ties and the calendar came . The friendly calendar , we
know it so well , it makes me homesick . We must really find a house> if it
is only to hang it on the wall. But we still don't know where we want to
live. It is very nice here , so sunny and friendly. Now we wait till Xmas is
past.

Perhaps Else and Barby are coming. Tomorrow we shall know . But
Else is working till the end of February , so she can only stay a week . She
says she wants to come before she gets married; because really she wants
to get married at last. Barby is not very well. Perhaps she will stay
some weeks with us.

We have a friend here , a young writer , quite nice and faithful. First
Frieda did not like him because he's not beautiful — but now she thinks
him quite good-looking and she likes him. We also had a young Australian
here for two days , this afternoon he left for Nice. He makes those
beautiful expensive books that people collect nowadays — he says he will
make a book next year of my paintings — of all my paintings , with a
foreword by me} to be sold at ten guineas each. It seems madness to me ,
but it's his money and he will pay me well — if he does it. But how mad
people are — there is quite a large vogue in editions de luxe that cost two
or five or even twenty-five pounds. I hate it.

Rhys Davies , the friend who is here , is Welsh and his grandfather was
also a miner.

Max Mohr writes a little sadly from his “ Wolfgrubef he says he
must always fight with his editors and has little money. There in
Bavaria the snow is deep .

I am glad that you are better . I also feel better , but hot sun and cold

[250]

. Going Back to Europe .

wind find my bronchi , that feel a bit raw . It is always so in weather like
this .

Else will be there , with you — she will give you five pounds from me,
from “ Jugend and keeps the rest . You will have a quiet, good, happy
Xmas, only keep still inside yourself

Greet them all from me. And Nusch? She won't be there any more. I
will write her and Emil. I hope we shall see them this spring, here on the
Mediterranean, where the sun is so bright, and the sea so blue, and the
small boats so white and dancing. Very friendly I find also the French¬
men, they leave you alone and don't hang on so heavily. But Frieda is
always longing for Italy, I think.

So farewell, mother-in-law. Merry Xmas. What flowers have you?
Here are many narcissi in the fields. Merry Xmas! Merry Xmas!

D. H. L.

(Translated from the German)

[251]

'Not I, But the Wind .

Hotel Principe Alfonso
Palma de Mallorca
Spain

12 June 1929
Dear Else:

We want to leave here next Tuesday — eighteenth — by the boat to
Marseille . Frieda sprained her ankle , bathing , but I think it will be
better by then — it's not bad . I want her to go and see after my pictures ,
as the show is supposed to open this week. And the book is ready
today — I have a set of the coloured plates — twenty-six — rather good ,
although only done in three-colour process . I hear they have already
orders for about three hundred copies at ten guineas , and ten vellum
copies at fifty guineas are all ordered. World of crazes! But I ought to
make about five hundred pounds out of the book — not bad. I shan't send
you a copy — I know you don't care especially about it — and in these
things you belong to the opposite direction , so of course you don't see much
value in work of this sort. You say satanisch. Perhaps you are right;
Lucifer is brighter now than tarnished Michael or shabby Gabriel. All
things fall in their turn , now Michael goes down, and whispering
Gabriel, and the Son of the Morning will laugh at them all . Yes , I am
all for Lucifer , who is really the Morning Star. The real principle of
Evil is not anti-Christ or anti- Jehovah , but anti-life. I agree with you
in a sense, that I am with the anti-Christ. Only I am not anti-life.

If Frieda comes to England from Marseille, I shall probably go to
North Italy, the Garda, where it won't be too hot. This year I don't want
to come very far north — I feel I am better south of the Alps — really .
Probably , Frieda will come to Baden on her way back from England .

This island is a queer place — so dry — but at last it has rained. We
might possibly come back next winter.

I expect the Schwiegermutter will have gone back to the Stift. I was

[252]

. Going Back to Europe .

glad she was well enough to come to Heidelberg . It must be summer
with you , leafy and lovely . Here it is all dried up, only the bushes of
wild thyme in flower on the waste places, and the bougainvilleas in the
gardens .

I wonder where you will go for the summer holiday? Anyhow we will
meet somewhere, if not in Baden .

Greet everybody from me .

D. H. L.

[253]

,€Not /, But the Wind .

6 Lungarno Corsini
Florence

Sunday

7 July

[To Frieda]

Maria drove me to Pisa yesterday afternoon — very sirocco and
overcast , but not hoty not at all uncomfortable . Unfortunately my
inside is upset — either I must have eaten something or it came from
drinking ice-water very cold on Thursday when it was very hot . Anyhow
my lower man hurts and it makes my chest sore — which is a pity9
because I was so well. Now Pm rather limp . But Vve kept still all day
ir\ Pino's flat , and he looks after me well — so I hope by tomorrow or
Tuesday it will be all right . Luigino Franchetti said he'd got ptomaine
poisoning , on Friday at Forte — but I think it was an upset too , nothing
serious. I think mine is going off. Pino's flat gets a bit hot just at
evening , but in the night and the most part of the day it is pleasant and
cool — it's not really a hot year. Carletto has gone off for a day's tramp
in the hills beyond Fiesole. Pino and I will have a cup of tea now , then
perhaps take a carriage-drive for an hour.

I had your mother's letter this morning — she says you are all going up
to Plassig or somewhere on the thirteenth — which is next Saturday .
What is it like there? Probably I shall arrive in Baden by then — it
depends a bit on the innards. I wanted to look at the Lake of Como to see
if we'd like a house there — but am not sure if I shall want to make the
effort. And I was so well before.

X ... Y ... is staying on in Forte y thank God — till about
fifteenth. She must be in Paris by twenty-third — sails on twenty-seventh
— thank heaven. She is a mixture of the worst side of A . . . — turns up
her eyes in that awful indecent fashion — and of L ... M .. . —
humblef cringing , yet impudent , with an eternal and ceaseless self -

[254]

. Going Back to Europe .

preoccupation, tangled up in her own ego till it's shameful — thinking all
and only of herself Ugh , she's awful . At the same time , she's a poor
pathetic thing . She has sent you a feather thing that she says is for a
little cape— pretty — but I shall leave it behind in the trunk . I am leaving
this trunk here also — the money they cost in transport and facchinaggio is
awful , pure waste — and the bother .

Well, I've not had a coherent or sensible letter from you since you left
Paris — so I suppose you were gone overhead — and then it's no use
saying anything . However , emerge quickly — and we'll see if we can
settle the probl m of a house .

Had a letter from Barby — but it wasn't somehow very nice — same
cattiveria as M ... , underneath — or so it seemed . I suppose you
didn't go and see my sisters. Hope Else is better. Aldous was very well.
I've never seen him so well. Am seeing nobody here. No sound from
Brett about MSS. or ranch. Think I shall come by night to Milano —
but hate sharing a berth with some stranger. Hope you are nice and
peaceful in Baden .

la.

I really think Italy is not good for my health — the country is much
slacker, all going deflated — and lots of poverty again , so they say. But
everybody is very nice, much softer once more , and sort of subdued.

[255]

'Not I, But the Wind

Florence
Monday night

[To Frieda]

The pains were a chill — have been in bed all day today — damn! Pino
very nice, but oh the noise of traffic. Pm a lot better. I want to get up
tomorrow , and leave if possible on Wednesday night for Milan. I might
arrive Baden on Thursday night — otherwise Friday — all being well.
Hot internal cold I've got, real Italian. I hate this country like poison,
sure it would kill me.

I should rather like an apartment for six weeks or so — Ebersteinburg,
Baden — anywhere — where I can lie in bed all day if I want to — and
where I needn't see people. But don't at all know what you feel like, since
you have not written lately.

Rained a bit today — quite cool. Pino and Carletto gone out into town.

D. H. L.

Shall wire — suppose you had all my letters addressed to the Kingsley.

[256]

Hotel Lowen
Lightental
13 August 1929

Going Back to Europe

Dear Else:

Hans says it rains in Bavaria , and Max Mohr says it rains in
Bavaria , so I suppose it does . Only now I hope it has left off '. Here it is
quite decent , sunny mornings , cloudy afternoons , and quite pleasant .
Tfo Schwiegermutter is here , to jzytf iTz* to/ go to£ to the Stift on
Thursday . On Friday her “ heissgeliebte Anita ” w due to arrive with
the not so heissgeliebter- aber dochgeliebter Hinke: they will stay a while
here in the Lowen . I have never met the Hinke, so I have a joy in store .

W'e had the 50 n Geburtstagsfeier on Sunday evening , oery noWe,
Bowie , trout, ducks, and nine people — /toe Halms, two Schweikhards ,
one Kugler — and they all seemed oery happy and we all kept it up very
bravely . ito a/aj, next day Frieda was in one of the worst moods I have
ever seen her in! — a Seelenkater, or however you spell it.

You hear the pictures are to be returned to me on condition that they
are never shown again in England, but sent away to me on the Continent ,
that they may never pollute that island of lily-livered angels again .
What hypocrisy and poltroonery, and how I detest and despise my
England . I had rather be a German or anything than belong to such a
nation of craven, cowardly hypocrites. My curse on them! They will
burn my four picture books, will they? So it is decreed. But they shall
burn through the thread of their own existence as a nation, at the same
time . Delenda est Cartago! — but she will destroy herself \ amply . Che
nuoia!

Your mother says we are to stay here till the middle of September . I
hope not . We have been here a month on Thursday, and when the
heissgeliebte Annie is here we shall surely be a superfluity. I should like
to move in another week or ten days . Shall we come to Bavaria , to

[ 257 ]

. “Not I, But the Wind . . ” .

Rottach , do you think? or best go sbuth to Lugano?

I wonder if Hans is setting off across the mountains?

We are going to tea with some Taormina friends , Americans , who
are staying in the Stephanie . Your mother says: Du wirst was Schones
sehen , das Stephanie! — It is all I can do not to make a really rude
remark. I am so sick of all those old lies. It is terrible to be old , one
becomes a bottle of old , but never mellow lies — lies, lies , lies! every -
thing. Weisheit der Alten! — nineteenth century lies.

Well, I hope it's pleasant in Irschenhausen . Only today I threw
away the flowers / gathered when you were here — and the toadflax
(wilde Lowenmdule) were still fresh.

D. H. L.

Remember me to Alfred , and Hans — and is Marianne better?

[258]

Going Back to Europe

Lowen
Lichtental
Baden-Baden
21 August 1929

Dear Else:

Frieda says she wants to stay till Sunday , to have her bath and her
masseuse once more. She is still troubled about the foot , though it is
much better. — So I suppose we shall arrive in Miinchen on Sunday
evening . — Max Mohr says he will meet us at Rottach station with a
Wagen — and he knows of a nice little house for us. So it sounds quite
goody if only it will not rain.

Your mother is going back into the Stift today — very sad — and
Annie is going to her tomorrow. I am very fed up with here , and shall
be glad to be gone too.

So — we shall see you one of these days in Bavaria!

D. H. L.

[259]

“Not I, But the Wind .

Hotel Lowen
Monday

Dear Else:

Just a line to say we expect to leave here for Miinchen next Saturday .
— I have written to Max Mohr to say we shall arrive in Rottach either
on Sunday or Monday . I suppose we shall stay one night in Miinchen .
What is the name of the hotel where we stayed last time? at the station?

Marianne sounded quite sad in her letter to Frieda . I'm so sorry ,
and do hope she's feeling better .

The Hinkes arrived on Saturday , both very nice . They are staying
in the Lowen here— your mother too — she would not go back to the
Stift. But Hinke returns to Volklingen today, and Annie and your
mother return to the Stift on Thursday — so we want to depart on
Saturday. I want to go — I get really depressed here — and you know
it isn't usual for me to get depressed. But here I get spells of hopeless
feeling , heavy, and I hate it. What is it? I never have them in other
countries . Is it Germany? or your mother, who is now so afraid of
death? Anyhow I hate it, and want to go away.

So I expect we shall see you in Bavaria — perhaps even in Miinchen .
I'm so glad you are having a good time. — I can just see the yellow
Pfijferlinge in the woods.

Regards to Alfred and to Marianne. — It has begun to rain again
here!

D. H. L.

[260]

Going Back to Europe

Villa Beau Soleil
BandoLj Var
France

4 October 1929
Dear Else:

Here we are already in a house of our own , a nice little bungalow
villa right on the sea — and with bathroom and all conveniences — and
a nice woman to cook and clean. It is very easy and I like it . I still
love the Mediterranean , it still seems young as Odysseus , in the morning .
And Frieda is happy. The only trouble is my health , which is not very
good . For some reason , which I don't understand , I lost a lot of strength
in Germany. I believe Germany would kill me, if I had to stay long
in it. Now it has killed Stresemann — whom will it not kill? — every¬
body except the Hindenburgs and the old women in the Stifts. Those
ancient ones are the terrible fungi , parasites of the younger life .

It is very lovely , the wind , the clouds , the running sea that bursts
up like blossom on the island opposite. If only I was well , and had
my strength back!

But I am so weak . And something inside me weeps black tears.
I wish it would go away.

Max Mohr is quite near in the Goelands Hotel — always very nice
and willing to do everything he can to help. But also his voice says
the same thing over and over again: Alles ist nichts? Why must
everybody say it? — when it is only they who are nothing , and perhaps
not even they. When the morning comes, and the sea runs silvery and
the distant islands are delicate and clear, then I feel again, only man
is vile . But man, at the moment, is very vile.

Perhaps a woman, Francesca Ewald, whose husband is brother of
the Salem Ewald woman , will write to you about translating some
short story of mine. Do advise her all you can.

[261]

99

. "Not I, But the Wind

The Huxleys say they want to come, and take a house here. I rather
hope they won't. The Brewsters also may come for the winter — their
girl is in school in England.

I do hope Marianne is well from her Ischias, and that everything goes
pleasantly. Frieda’s foot is nearly better — still a little stiffness.

Ever

D. H. L.

[262]

Going Back to Europe

Beau Soleil
Bandol, Var
France

14 December 1929
Dear Else:

I got a copy of “Plumed Serpent ” and tried to translate a hymn —
but you might as well ask me to translate into Hottentot — / can’t
even begin. So that’s that . I think Tal of Vienna is going to do
“ Lady C.” — and the translator Herbert E. Herlitschka , Wiedner
Giirtel 6, Wien /F, has written me several times. He seems a com¬
petent and experienced translator — and his criticism of the translation
of “ Women in Love” made my blood feel chill. He says he would
be glad to help you with “ Plumed Serpent’’ if there is any difficulty ,
or to go over the manuscript if you could send him a carbon copy. You
must please yourself about it.

You are coming to see us in the New Year. I wish you would send
an approximate date , as my sister Ada also wants to come> and Barby .
There’s only one little extra bedroom .

We’ve had lovely sunny weather all week — today is a most beautiful
day , still and sunny. The narcissus are in full flower in the tiny field
next to us. So yellow.

My health has been a great nuisance — not so good as last winter —
and it wearies me. Then I don’t want to do anything.

The Brewsters are still in the hotel — and Mr. and Mrs. Di
Chiara from Capri (she is American ) and Ida Rauh (Mrs. Max
Eastman — the socialist’s wife) from Santa Fe — and they all come
trooping along , so we are by no means alone. Frieda loves
her little house — though it’s very commonplace — but it is sunny
and warm and easy , so one doesn’t grumble. Her foot still troubles
her a bit.

[263]

. “Not I, But the Wind . . .

Have you seen Dr. Osborne's translation of “Fantasia"? — quite
good , in my opinion.

I shall write again directly.

Love.

D. H. L.

[264]

Going Back to Europe

Beau Soleil
Bandol, Var
30 January 1930

Dear Else:

So you got back safely — at least as far as Strassburg . Here all is
the same — I lay out today in the mouth of the garage , because the
mistral is blowing — a sunny, brilliant day with blue sea and sharp
white foam .

Barby helps Frieda to look after me, and all goes very well . Yesterday
the bronchitis was much better, but today it is tiresome again —
probably the wind.

The doctor sent word about the nursing home at Vence — it is not
much of a place — like a little hotel or convalescent home . If I make
good progress here, I shall not go to Vence — but if I don't get better,
I will. But truly, I am already much stronger for this rest .

It was very kind of you to come all that long way to give us a helping
hand — it did Frieda a lot of good, to share the responsibility with you,
and I was glad to see you .

I have asked for a copy of “ The Escaped Cock” for you. Barby is
still in an unhappy state, inside herself Oh dear!

Remember me to Friedel.

D. H. L.

[265]

Nearing the End

Now I am nearing the end ... I think of Bandol and our
little villa “Beau Soled” on the sea, the big balcony windows
looking toward the sea, another window at the side overlooking
a field of yellow narcissus called “soled” and pine-trees beyond
and again the sea. I remember sunny days when the waves
came flying along with white manes, they looked as if they
might come flying right up the terrace into his room. There
were plants in his room and they flowered so well and I said
to him: “Why, oh why, can’t you flourish like those?” I
remember what a beautiful and strange time it was. One day
a cat, a big handsome yellow-and- white cat came in; Lawrence
chased it away. “We don’t want it. If we go away it’ll be
miserable. We don’t want to take the responsibility for it”;
but the cat stayed, it insisted on it. Its name was “Micky”
and it grew more and more beautiful and never a cat played
more intelligently than Micky ... he played hide-and-go-
seek with me, and Lawrence played mouse with him. . . .
Lawrence was such a convincing mouse . . . and then he
insisted: “You must put this cat out at night or it will become
a bourgeois, uribeautiful cat.” So very sadly, at nightfall, in
spite of Micky’s remonstrances I put him out into the garden.
To Mme Martens, the cook, Lawrence said: “Vous lui donnez
k manger, il dort avec moi, et Madame 1’ amuse.”

But in the morning at dawn Micky and I appeared in Law¬
rence’s room . . . Micky took a flying leap on to Lawrence’s
bed and began playing with his toes, and I looked at Lawrence
to see how he was ... his worst time was before dawn when

[267]

»

. “Not I, But the Wind

he coughed so much, and I knew what he had been through.

. . . But then at dawn I believe he felt grateful that another
day had been given him. “Come when the sun rises,” he said,
and when I came he was glad, so very glad, as if he would say:
“See, another day is given me.”

The sun rose magnificently opposite his bed in red and gold
across the bay and the fishermen standing up in their boats
looked like eternal mythological figures dark and alive against
the lit-up splendour of the sea and sky, and when I asked him:
“What kind of a night did you have?” to comfort me, he
would answer: “Not so bad . . .” but it was bad enough to
break one’s heart. . . . And his courage and unflinching
spirit, doing their level best to live as long as he possibly could
in this world he loved so much, gave me courage too. Never,
in all illness and suffering, did he let the days sink to a dreary
or dull or sordid level . . . those last months had the glamour
of a rosy sunset ... I can only think with awe of those last
days of his, as of the rays of the setting sun . . . and the
setting sun obliterates all the sordid details of a landscape. So
the dreary passages in our lives were wiped out and he said
to me: “Why, oh why did we quarrel so much?” and I could
see how it grieved him . . . our terrible quarrels . . . but I
answered: “Such as we were, violent creatures, how could we
help it?”

One day the charming old mother of Mme Douillet who
was at the Hotel Beau Rivage brought us two gold-fish in a
bowl; “Pour amuser Monsieur,” but, alas, Micky thought it
was “pour amuser Monsieur le chat.” With that fixed, incom¬
prehensible cat-stare he watched those red lines moving in
the bowl . . . then my life became an anxious one . . . the
gold-fish had to go in the bathroom on a little table in the sun.
Every morning their water was renewed and I had to let it

[268]

. Nearing the End .

run for half an hour into the bowl. That was all they got, the
gold-fish, no food. And they flourished. . . . “Everything
flourishes/5 I said to Lawrence imploringly, “plants and cats
and gold-fish, why can’t you?” And he said: “I want to, I
want to, I wish I could.”

His friend Earl Brewster came and massaged him every day
with coconut oil . . . and it grieved me to see Lawrence’s
strong, straight, quick legs gone so thin, so thin . . . and one
day he said to me: “I could always trust your instinct to know
the right thing for me, but now you don’t seem to know any
more ...” I didn’t ... I didn’t know any more . . .

And one night he asked me: “Sleep with me,” and I did . . .
all night I was aware of his aching inflexible chest, and all
night he must have been so sadly aware of my healthy body
beside him . . . always before, when I slept by the side of
him, I could comfort and ease him . . . now no more. . . .
He was falling away from life and me, and with all my strength
I was helpless. . . .

Micky had his eye on the gold-fish. One sad evening at tea-
time the bathroom door was left open. ... I came and
found both gold-fish on the floor, Micky had fished them out
of the bowl. I put them in quickly, one revived, a little sadder
and less golden for his experience, but the other was dead.
Lawrence was furious with Micky. “He knew we wanted him
to leave those gold-fish alone, he knew it. We feed him, we
take care of him, he had no right to do it.”

When I argued that it was the nature of cats and they must
follow their instincts he turned on me and said: “It’s your
fault, you spoil him, if he wanted to eat me you would let
him.” And he wouldn’t let Micky come near him /or several
days.

I felt: “Now I can do no more for Lawrence, only the sun

[269]

99

. “ Not I, But the Wind

and the sea and the stars and the moon at night, that’s his
portion now. . . He never would have the shutters shut
or the curtains drawn, so that at night he could see the sky.
In those days he wrote his “Apocalypse”; he read it to me,
and how strong his voice still was, and I said: “But this is
splendid.”

I was reading the New Testament and told Lawrence: “I
get such a kick out of it, just the same as when Azul gallops
like the wind across the desert with me.”

As he read it to me he got angry with all those mixed-up
symbols and impossible pictures.

He said: “In this book I want to go back to old days, pre-
Bible days, and pick up for us there what men felt like and
lived by then.”

The pure artist in him revolted! His sense of the fitness of
things never left him in the lurch! He stuck to his sense of
measure and I am often amused at the criticism people bring
against him . . . criticisms only reveal the criticizers and
their limitations. ... If the criticizer is an interesting person
his criticism will be interesting, if he isn’t then it’s waste of
time to listen to him. If he voices a general opinion he is
uninteresting too, because we all know the general opinion ad
nauseum. “My flesh grows weary on my bones” was one of
Lawrence’s expressions when somebody held forth to him, as
if one didn’t know beforehand what most people will say!

One day Lawrence said to himself: “I shan’t die ... a
rich man now . . . perhaps it’s just as well, it might have
done something to me.” But I doubt whether even a million
or two would have changed him!

One day he said: “I can’t die, I can’t die, I hate them
too much! I have given too much and what did I get in
return?”

[270]

. . Nearing the End .

It sounded so comical the way he said it, and I ignored the
depth of sadness and bitterness of the words and said: “No,
Lawrence, you don’t hate them as much as all that,” It
seemed to comfort him.

And now I wonder and am grateful for the superhuman
strength that was given us both in those days. Deep down I
knew “something is going to happen, we are steering towards
some end,” but every nerve was strained and every thought
and every feeling . . . Life had to be kept going gaily at any
price.

Since Doctor Max Mohr had gone, we had no doctor, only
Mme Martens, the cook. She was very good at all kinds of
tisanes and inhalations and mustard piasters, and she was a
very good cook.

My only grief was that we had no open fireplaces, only
central heating and, thank goodness, the sun all day. Lawrence
made such wonderful efforts of will to go for walks and the strain
of it made him irritable. If I went with him it was pure agony
walking to the corner of the little road by the sea, only a few
yards! How gallantly he tried to get better and live! He was
so very clever with his frail failing body. Again one could
learn from him how to handle this complicated body of ours,
he knew so well what was good for him, what he needed, by
an unfailing instinct, or he would have died many years ago . . .
and I wanted to keep him alive at any cost. I had to see him
day by day getting nearer to the end, his spirit so alive and
powerful that the end and death seemed unthinkable and
always will be, for me.

And then Gertler sent a doctor friend to us, and when he
saw Lawrence he said the only salvation was a sanatorium
higher up. . . .

For the last years I had found that for a time mountain

[271 ]

. “Not J, But the Wind . . ” .

air, and then a change by the sea, seemed to suit Lawrence
best. Lawrence had always thought with horror of a sana¬
torium, we both thought with loathing of it. Freedom that
he cherished so much! He never felt like an invalid, I saw to
that! Never should he feel a poor sick thing as long as I was
there and his spirit! Now we had to give in ... we were
beaten. With a set face Lawrence made me bring all his papers
on to his bed and he tore most of them up and made everything
tidy and neat and helped to pack his own trunks, and I never
cried. . . . His self-discipline kept me up, and my admiration
for his unfailing courage. And the day came that the motor
stood at the door of our little house, Beau Soleil. . . . Micky
the cat had been taken by Achsah Brewster. She came before
we started with armfuls of almond blossoms, and Earl Brewster
travelled with us. . . . And patiently, with a desperate
silence, Lawrence set out on his last journey. At Toulon station
he had to walk down and up stairs, wasting strength he could
ill afford to waste, and the shaking train and then the long
drive from Antibes to the “Ad Astra” at Vence. . . . And
again he had to climb stairs. There he lay in a blue room
with yellow curtains and great open windows and a balcony
looking over the sea. When the doctors examined him and
asked him questions about himself he told them: “I have had
bronchitis since I was a fortnight old.”

In spite of his thinness and his illness he never lost his
dignity, he fought on and he never lost hope. Friends
brought flowers, pink and red cyclamen and hyacinths and
fruit . . . but he suffered much and when I bade him
“good night” he said: “Now I shall have to fight several
batdes of Waterloo before morning.” I dared not understand
to the full the meaning of his words. One day he said to my
daughter:

[87a]

. Nearing the End .

“Your mother does not care for me any more, the death in
me is repellent to her.”

But it was the sadness of his suffering . . . and he would
not eat and he had much pain . . . and we tried so hard to
think of different foods for him. His friends tried to help him,
the Di Chiaras and the Brewsters and Aldous and Maria
Huxley and Ida Rauh.

Wells came to see him, and the Aga Khan with his charming
wife. Jo Davidson did a bust of him.

One night I saw how he did not want me to go away, so I
came again after dinner and I said: “I’ll sleep in your room
tonight.” His eyes were so grateful and bright, but he turned
to my daughter and said: “It isn’t often I want your mother,
but I do want her tonight to stay.” I slept on the long chair
in his room, and I looked out at the dark night and I wanted
one single star to shine and comfort me, but there wasn’t one;
it was a dark big sky, and no moon and no stars. I knew how
Lawrence suffered and yet I could not help him. So the days
went by in agony and the nights too; my legs would hardly
carry me, I could not stay away from him, and always the
dread, “How shall I find him?” One night I thought of the
occasion long ago when I knew I loved him, when a tender¬
ness for him rose in me that I had not known before. He had
taken my two little girls and me for a walk in Sherwood
Forest, through some fields we walked, and the children ran
all over the place, and we came to a brook. ... it ran rather
fast under a small stone bridge. The children were thrilled,
the brook ran so fast. Lawrence quite forgot me but picked
daisies and put them face upwards on one side of the bridge
in the water and then said: “Now look, look if they come out
on the other side.”

He also made them paper boats and put burning matches

[ 273 ]

>5

. “Wot /, But the Wind

into them; “this is the Spanish Armada, and you don’t know
what that was.” “Yes, we do,” the older girl said promptly.
I can see him now, crouching down, so intent on the game,
so young and quick, and the small girls in their pink and
white striped Viyella frocks, long-legged like colts, in wild
excitement over such a play-fellow. But that was long ago
. . . and I thought: “This is the man whom they call sex-
obsessed.”

I slept on his cane chair several nights. I heard coughing
from many rooms, old coughing and young coughing. Next
to his room was a young girl with her mother, and I heard
her call out: “Mama, Mama, je souffre tant!” I was glad
Lawrence was a little deaf and could not hear it all. One day
he tried to console me and said: “You must not feel so sympa¬
thetic for people. When people are ill or have lost their
eyesight there is always a compensation. The state they are
in is different. You needn’t think it’s the same as when you
are well.”

After one night when he had suffered so much, I told my¬
self: “It is enough, it is enough; nobody should have to stand
this.”

He was very irritable and said: “Your sleeping here does
me no good.” I ran away and wept. When I came back he
said so tenderly: “Don’t mind, you know I want nothing but
you, but sometimes something is stronger in me.”

We prepared to take him out of the nursing home and
rented a villa where we took him. ... It was the only time
he allowed me to put on his shoes, everything else he always
did for himself. He went in the shaking taxi and he was taken
into the house and lay down on the bed on which he was to
die, exhausted. I slept on the couch where he could see me.
He still ate. The next day was a Sunday. “Don’t leave me,”

[ 274 ]

. Nearing the End . . .

he said, “don’t go away.” So I sat by his bed and read. He
was reading the life of Columbus. After lunch he began to
suffer very much and about tea-time he said: “I must have
a temperature, I am delirious. Give me the thermometer.”
This is the only time, seeing his tortured face, that I cried,
and he said: “Don’t cry,” in a quick, compelling voice. So I
ceased to cry any more. He called Aldous and Maria Huxley
who were there, and for the first time he cried out to them
in his agony. “I ought to have some morphine now,” he told
me and my daughter, so Aldous went off to find a doctor to
give him some. . . . Then he said: “Hold me, hold me, I
don’t know where I am, I don’t know where my hands are . . .
where am I?”

Then the doctor came and gave him a morphine injection.
After a little while he said: “I am better now, if I could only
sweat I would be better . . .” and then again: “I am better
now.” The minutes went by, Maria Huxley was in the room
with me. I held his left ankle from time to time, it felt so full
of life, all my days I shall hold his ankle in my hand.

He was breathing more peacefully, and then suddenly there
were gaps in the breathing. The moment came when the
thread of life tore in his heaving chest, his face changed, his
cheeks and jaw sank, and death had taken hold of him. . . .
Death was there, Lawrence was dead. So simple, so small a
change, yet so final, so staggering. Death!

I walked up and down beside his room, by the balcony,
and everything looked different, there was a new thing, death,
where there had been life, such intense life. The olive trees
outside looked so black and close, and the sky so near: I looked
into the room, there were his slippers with the shape of his
feet standing neatly under the bed, and under the sheet he lay,
cold and remote, he whose ankle I had held alive only an hour

[275]

9)

. “Not /, But the Wind

or so ago. ... I looked at his face. So proud, manly and
splendid he looked, a new face there was. All suffering had
been wiped from it, it was as if I had never seen him or known
him in all the completeness of his being. I wanted to touch
him but dared not, he was no longer in life with me. There
had been the change, he belonged somewhere else now, to all
the elements; he was the earth and sky, but no longer a living
man. Lawrence, my Lorenzo who had loved me and I him . . .
he was dead. . . .

Then we buried him, very simply, like a bird we put him
away, a few of us who loved him. We put flowers into his
grave and all I said was: “Good-bye, Lorenzo,” as his friends
and I put lots and lots of mimosa on his coffin. Then he was
covered over with earth while the sun came out on to his
small grave in the little cemetery of Vence which looks over
the Mediterranean that he cared for so much.

[276]

Conclusion

Now that I have told my story in such a condensed way,
letting blow through my mind anything that wanted to blow,
I know how little I have said — how much I could say that
perhaps would be more interesting.

But I wrote what rose up, and here it is.

Frieda Lawrence.

Kiowa Ranch
San Cristobal
New Mexico

[277]